[1] In 2003, Kris left the Department of Justice (DOJ) to become a counsel, chief ethics and compliance officer and senior vice president at Time Warner.

In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Kris for assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's National Security Division, which was created in 2006.

[5][6][7] Law professor Marty Lederman called Kris's memo "by a large measure the most thorough and careful—and, for those reasons, the most devastating—critique anyone has offered of the DOJ argument that Congress statutorily authorized the NSA program.

"[8] He also makes shorter arguments regarding the Fourth Amendment implications of the warrantless domestic spying and the administration's "unitary executive theory" of Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

[10] He had furthermore previously appeared before Congress in his personal capacity, after leaving the DOJ, to continue advocating for the government to have enhanced flexibility under FISA and the PATRIOT Act.