Trump Fires Acting AG After Executive Order Memo

President Donald Trump moved swiftly Monday to fire the acting attorney general, a holdover from former President Barack Obama’s administration who had ordered the Justice Department to stand down in the legal fight over his travel ban executive order, a former federal prosecutor said Monday.

Sally Yates, a deputy attorney general in the previous administration who took the helm of the Justice Department when Attorney General Loretta Lynch resigned, wrote in a letter to top lawyers that she was not convinced that Trump’s order blocking some foreigners from America is legal. She wrote that she had a responsibility to ensure that government lawyers were not taking positions in court that were inconsistent with the department’s obligation to seek justice.

“Ms. Yates has disgraced the department and herself. She’s an embarrassment to anyone who ever worked there.”

“At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful,” she wrote.

Trump appointed U.S. Attorney Dana Boente of the Eastern District of Virginia to replace Yates as acting attorney general.

“The acting attorney general, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” the president said in a statement. “This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.”

Joseph diGenova, who served as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in the Reagan administration, said Yates should have resigned if she felt uncomfortable defending the administration.

“She should be removed from office immediately,” he said prior to Trump relieving Yates of her position. “This is the danger of holdovers from previous administrations who are philosophically opposed to a new president … Ms. Yates has disgraced the department and herself. She’s an embarrassment to anyone who ever worked there.”

Trump’s executive order took a number of steps. It suspended Syrian refugees indefinitely and froze the entire refugee program for 120 days in order conduct a review of procedures used to scrutinize refugees who would be relocated to the United States. It also reduced the cap on refugees from 110,000 to 50,000 for the current fiscal year. In addition, it ordered a 90-day pause on all travel to the United States from seven countries.

Judges in Brooklyn and Virginia over the weekend suspended enforcement of the ban as it applies to legal residents with green cards. Administration officials since then have said the order does not apply to green card holders.

Trump  has foreshadowed the firing in a tweet: ‘The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons. They have nothing going but to obstruct. Now have an Obama A.G.”

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Commentators on CNN rushed to compare a firing of Yates — even before it could — to the “Saturday Night Massacre” in which Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate investigation.

DiGenova ridiculed that as “ridiculous commentary.” He said Trump was well within his rights to dismiss the acting attorney general.

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Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, a longtime liberal legal icon, said on CNN’s “Out Front” program that Yates should not have ordered Justice Department lawyers to stand down.

“This is holdover heroism,” he said. “It’s so easy to be a heroine when you’re not appointed by this president, when you’re on the other side. She made a serous mistake.”

Dershowitz said the issues involving the order are complicated. He said Yates should have written a nuanced legal analysis laying out which parts are unconstitutional, which parts might violate a statute, and which parts are merely bad policy. He said there is a big difference between legal permanent residents and foreigners who want to come to the United States.

By lumping all of them together, Dershowitz said, Yates has made a political decision rather than a legal one

“We have a hobby in this country,” he said. “If you don’t like something, you assume it’s unconstitutional.”