Bruce Fein

Bruce Fein (born March 12, 1947) is an American lawyer who specializes in constitutional and international law.

Fein has written numerous articles on constitutional issues for The Washington Times, Slate.com, The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Legal Times, and is active on civil liberties issues.

He has worked for the American Enterprise Institute and The Heritage Foundation, both conservative think tanks, as an analyst and commentator.

Fein is a principal in a government affairs and public relations firm, The Lichfield Group, in Washington, D.C. He is also a resident scholar at the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA).

After graduating, Fein joined the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel just when the Watergate scandal was starting.

His first task was drafting a 100-page memorandum on what constituted an impeachable offense.

When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, Fein was appointed assistant deputy attorney general, reporting directly to the department's No. 2, Ed Schmaltz.

Under President Ronald Reagan, Fein served as an associate deputy attorney general from 1981 to 1982 and as general counsel to the Federal Communications Commission.

During that period, he wrote a 30-page critique of Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court ruling that freed American media from much of its liability under libel law in the United States.

That memorandum was briefly misattributed to Judge John Roberts while his nomination to be Chief Justice of the United States was pending.

In 1987, Fein served as the minority (minority party) research director of the committee in the United States House of Representatives that investigated the Iran-Contra Affair.

The George W. Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program, which intercepted some communications without a warrant from the FISA court, incensed Fein enough to propose censure or even impeachment of Bush.

He ridiculed Harriet Miers's Supreme court nomination, and was sharply critical of then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Fein argued that subsequent revelations that the Court was misled, changes in attitudes, and notably the Congress passing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 in which it apologized for the nation and made reparations for internment of Japanese Americans, history has in effect overturned the Korematsu decision.

While the Supreme Court has not actually overturned Korematsu, Harvard University's Noah Feldman has come to the same conclusion, declaring that "Korematsu ' s uniquely bad legal status means it's not precedent even though it hasn't been overturned."

Both made arguments in line with Richard Primus' notion of "Anti-Canon" cases, those which have come to be seen as exemplars of faulty legal reasoning and / or decision making, with Feldman comparing Korematsu to Plessy v. Ferguson and Fein stating that it has "joined Dred Scott as an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry."

His first Armenia-related action as a lawyer was to represent the Assembly of Turkish American Associations in their sentencing related intervention in the court case against Mourad Topalian, sentenced in 2001 for illegal storing of war weapons and explosives, linked to the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide.

Bruce Fein married Mattie Lolavar on May 15, 2004.

In March 2007, he founded the American Freedom Agenda with Bob Barr, David Keene and Richard Viguerie.

Notable published writings by Fein include articles advocating the impeachment of former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney.

On September 2, 2008, Fein addressed Ron Paul's "Rally For The Republic" in Minneapolis, offering a critique of the Bush administration's interventionist policy and advocating a more non-interventionist foreign policy.

Fein also harshly criticized the anti-terror policies of the Bush White House, including wiretapping and detention of terror suspects.

In April 2009, Fein criticized President Barack Obama for declining to prosecute Bush administration officials for composing CIA memos justifying torture during interrogations.

In 2011, Fein proposed impeaching President Barack Obama in connection with the 2011 military intervention in Libya.

The two were divorced in June 2013.

Fein is the brother of Dan Fein, a prominent figure in the Socialist Workers Party and former candidate for governor of Illinois and mayor of New York City.

Fein was a top Justice Department official under the Ronald Reagan administration.

He has criticized the Bush, Clinton, and Obama presidencies.

In the summer of 2013, Fein was hired by Lon Snowden, father of fugitive ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

However, Edward Snowden subsequently made clear that Fein did not represent him, explaining that certain comments about his relationship with Glenn Greenwald were misattributed as his own, rather than properly attributed to either Fein or Snowden's father.

In January 2014, Rand Paul announced he was filing a class-action suit against the Obama Administration over the warrantless surveying the PRISM program allowed the National Security Administration to use.

A controversy was stirred by the reporting that the lawsuit was drafted by Fein, but his name was replaced with Ken Cuccinelli's, the lead counsel on the lawsuit.

Mattie Fein, Fein's ex-wife and spokeswoman, told a Washington Post reporter that "Ken Cuccinelli stole the suit," and that Rand Paul "already has one plagiarism issue, now has a lawyer who just takes another lawyer's work product."

Paul's PAC refuted these claims by producing an email from Fein stating that his ex-wife did not speak for him and that he was paid for his work.

During the transition following the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court's decision in Korematsu v. United States was suggested as offering possible support for implementing his policies targeting all Muslims in the United States.

During the 2016 election Fein had been critical of Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, and argued on The Huffington Post that she was too eager for war.

Fein has acted "on behalf of Tamils Against Genocide" related to espouse their cause—that is, to present parts of the Sri Lankan Civil War as Tamil genocide.

It included attempts to bring criminal charges against some American citizens who are prominent members of the Sri Lankan government.

Fein has penned several articles on the topic, including in The Washington Times and The Huffington Post where he states no racial, ethnic or religious motivation for the Armenian genocide ever existed.

According to historian Julien Zarifian, Fein is one of the "people who openly and vehemently deny the Armenian Genocide".