US Vice-President and Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris has enlisted her brother-in-law, Tony West, 58, to join her campaign team. West, an attorney who previously served in the Justice Department during Barack Obama’s presidency, is expected to be a significant adviser, as reported by Axios. In addition to his governmental experience, West has held high-level positions at Uber and Pepsico.
According to the New York Post, West has also worked as an attorney for the San Francisco-based law firm Morrison & Foerster. He was involved in the high-profile case of John Walker Lindh, known as the ‘American Taliban’, where he represented Lindh, who had left the US to train with Osama bin Laden and fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan. US forces captured Lindh in Afghanistan in November 2001.
During Lindh’s trial, West argued that his client was not a terrorist. “He is not a terrorist. He did not go to Afghanistan to kill Americans,” West told the Washington Post in 2002 when he was 21.
John Walker Lindh faced ten federal charges, including conspiracy to murder US citizens and providing services to al Qaeda. In 2002, he accepted a plea deal, admitting to supplying services to the Taliban and carrying an explosive during the commission of a felony. Lindh served 17 years of a 20-year sentence.
In a separate development, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday overruled a plea agreement reached earlier this week for the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks and two other defendants, reinstating their cases as death-penalty cases. Mohammed, described by the U.S. as the main plotter of the attacks that targeted the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, along with the other two defendants, had been expected to formally enter their pleas under the deal as soon as next week.