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| Sally Yates, the former acting Attorney General, was fired by Donald Trump after she stated that the law required her not to enforce his ban on refugees and on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. |
VietPress USA (Jan. 30th, 2017): President Donald Trump today on Monday, Jan. 30th, 2017, decided to fire Sally Yates, the acting Attorney General for her not to obey his Executive Order that bans Muslim people from 7 Muslim-majority Countries to enter the United States. Please read the details published by The New Yorker:
WHAT SALLY YATES PROVED ABOUT DONALD TRUMP
On Monday, Sally Yates, the acting Attorney General,
provided an example of what it means to work honorably for Donald Trump. It
comes down to conducting yourself in a way that, in many cases, will
result—that you know will result—in not working for him for very long. Trump
fired Yates after she refused to deploy Justice Department lawyers in defense
of his executive order, issued on Friday, which bans people from seven
Muslim-majority countries, and refugees from anywhere in the world, from
entering the United States.
Yates was an Obama holdover; she was expected to keep the
Justice Department running until the Trump team had been confirmed. She might
have seen herself as without a mandate. She might have thought that she had no
choice but to support the new President when he signed an order that, though
gussied up with a supposed temporary focus on dangerous lands, laid the basis
for a religious test on immigration and for institutionalized discrimination
against certain legal residents—not to mention the spectre of family division and
the possible abandonment of America’s treaty obligations. When lawyers for the
American Civil Liberties Union and other groups rushed to court to challenge
the executive order, and U.S. Attorneys assembled lawyers to defend it, Yates
could have sent federal attorneys into court, if only to go through the
motions. She wouldn’t have had to do anything but mourn the harm to ordinary
lives and to America’s values. Perhaps no one would have blamed her. Or she
could have garnered all the praise she needed, in her circles, by resigning in
a muted fashion and then, as a private citizen, writing an op-ed or giving an
interview, maybe even an enraged one. Yates did something different: she
decided that her job, her official position, not her policy beliefs or even the
dictates of her conscience, required that she defy the President.
She did so in a letter which notes that Justice Department
lawyers are “charged with advancing reasonable legal arguments that can be made
supporting an Executive Order,” but that her role “as leader of this
institution is different and broader. My responsibility is to ensure that the
position of the Department of Justice is not only legally defensible, but is
informed by our best view of what the law is after consideration of all the facts.”
Those facts, she suggested, included the context and the statements that “an
Administration or its surrogates” made at various points about the purpose of
this executive order. She was apparently referring to the Muslim ban that Trump
promised his supporters during the campaign, and to statements about giving
preferential treatment to Christians, which made it clear that the notion that
this action wasn’t really about religion or bigotry was a sham. Yates
continued, “I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court
remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek
justice and stand for what is right. 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.” And so, as Yates said, “For as
long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not
present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become
convinced that it is appropriate to do so.” It wasn’t hard to guess which of
those things—staying the acting Attorney General, and becoming convinced of the
appropriateness of the order—might change first.
This could all be seen as a particularly dramatic
resignation letter. There can’t be any doubt that Yates was going to be out of
a job soon after she sent it—this Monday Night Massacre, despite the Nixonian
parallels, should come as less of a surprise than the original Saturday-night
version, given everything that we already know about Trump. But, by daring
Trump to fire her, and for doing her job until and despite his decision to do
so, Yates made a powerful statement about the profession of politics itself. A
large part of it is the ever more essential struggle to keep careerism and
partisanship from blinding one to citizenship and principle. (Paul Ryan and a
lot of his colleagues have failed this test.) But there is also, for those who
form the moving parts of our constitutional machinery, a question of the duty
one has—and to what, and to whom.
Trump has an easy answer: to him. In the White House
statement regarding the matter, released on Monday night, he made it clear that
he confuses constitutional obligations with personal obedience. “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,” it said. “Betrayed” is a shocking word here, particularly given
the suggestion that she is indifferent to American lives, suggesting as it does
that she ought to be seen as a traitor to her country, rather than a dissenter.
(As a prosecutor, she helped win the conviction of Eric Rudolph, the Olympic
Park bomber.) And, indeed, the statement goes on to say that Yates “is weak on
borders and very weak on illegal immigration.” Does Trump really know that
about her? Does he know anything about her, other than that she didn’t listen
to him?
oOo
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