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Trump’s Talk About Muslims Led Acting Attorney General to Defy Ban Trump’s Talk About Muslims Led Acting Attorney General to Defy Ban
(about 5 hours later)
As Republicans seethed over President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration in early 2015, Senator Jeff Sessions sharply questioned Sally Q. Yates about whether she had the independent streak needed to be the Justice Department’s second in command. ATLANTA — As a young prosecutor in the late 1990s, Sally Q. Yates sat at a conference table with a former sheriff and began picking away at his story. With an F.B.I. agent watching, Ms. Yates soon had the lawman in knots about a deposition.
Mr. Sessions, Republican of Alabama, wanted to know whether Ms. Yates, a federal prosecutor from Georgia who made her career charging domestic terrorists and white-collar criminals, would be willing to stand up to the president. “I watched him as she broke him down, and he confessed that he had lied under oath,” the agent, Oliver G. Halle, now retired, recalled on Tuesday. “She can be very disarming, but underneath that disarming appearance is a woman who knows how to fight.”
“If the views the president wants to execute are unlawful, should the attorney general or the deputy attorney general say no?” Mr. Sessions asked during a confirmation hearing for Ms. Yates. As acting attorney general, Ms. Yates picked the fight of her life on Monday when she ordered the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s executive order blocking refugees and restricting immigration to the United States. Ms. Yates became convinced, based on the president’s own statements, that he had intended to unlawfully single out Muslims, senior officials said.
“We have comments from the president about what this is supposed to do,” Ms. Yates said in one meeting on Monday, according to two people involved in the discussions. She later added, “The intent was clear from the face of it.”
Ms. Yates, 56, was swiftly fired. Before she even finished packing up her office, she had become a hero to many Democrats, the face of a simmering resistance inside the government to Mr. Trump’s administration.
Her firing was a politically divisive turn in a career that had, until now, earned her bipartisan praise.
“She will be a hero of the American people, a hero of what’s right,” Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, said in 2015 at Ms. Yates’s confirmation hearing. “She’ll call them like she sees them, and she will be fair, and she will be just.”
While Ms. Yates was a reliably liberal voice in the Justice Department on issues of civil rights, criminal justice and sentencing, she worked her way up as a career prosecutor in Atlanta under political appointees from both parties. A native Georgian, she led prosecutions against some of the highest profile defendants in Atlanta, including former Mayor Bill Campbell, a Democrat who was accused of racketeering and tax fraud, and Eric Robert Rudolph, who set bombs at a park during the 1996 Olympic Games, a gay nightclub and two Southern abortion clinics.
She also took on the leaders of an Atlanta suburb who refused to allow construction of a mosque. The Justice Department sued, and the city reversed itself. “Religious freedom requires that local government decisions impacting the exercise of that freedom be free of discrimination,” Ms. Yates said at the time.
When Ms. Yates, who declined to comment on Tuesday, became deputy attorney general in 2015, she told colleagues that she had no intention of merely being a caretaker. “We’re going to run through the tape,” she often said.
In Washington, her outgoing personality made her a counterpoint to her more reserved boss, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. At times that made Ms. Yates the face of the Justice Department in ways that caused tension with Ms. Lynch’s staff. Ms. Yates was regarded as professionally ambitious, though she has told friends that she has no interest in running for political office.
Last year, Ms. Yates and Ms. Lynch earned the ire of Democrats — including many in the department — for not intervening to prohibit the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, from sending a letter to Congress in the final days of the presidential campaign. The letter raised the prospect of new and potentially damaging evidence against Hillary Clinton related to an investigation that had been closed. Nothing came of the new evidence, and Mrs. Clinton’s team says the letter cost her the presidency. Her supporters argued that Justice Department leaders were too timid to stand up to Mr. Comey.
Mr. Trump’s executive order prompted a new challenge for Ms. Yates, who was serving until the Senate confirmed a new attorney general. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had reviewed and signed off on the order, but Ms. Yates believed that the department had to also consider the president’s intent, which she said appeared aimed at singling out people based on religion.
Mr. Trump had promised to do as much. His campaign website still calls for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” After the decision was announced, one of his advisers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said in an interview that Mr. Trump had wanted a Muslim ban but needed “the right way to do it legally.” Mr. Trump then said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that Christian refugees would be given priority for entry visas to the United States.
In meetings on Monday, some in the department said it should defend the order, as it normally does. Others disagreed.
Prominent lawyers echoed that debate on Tuesday. Some former Justice Department officials, like Martin Lederman, praised Ms. Yates’s decision. Ms. Lynch said “her courageous leadership embodies the highest traditions of the Department of Justice.”
But others, like Jack Goldsmith, said she should have either defended the president’s order or resigned. George J. Terwilliger III, a former deputy attorney general who, like Ms. Yates, served briefly as acting attorney general, said that Ms. Yates had made herself and the Justice Department “look blatantly political.”
Ms. Yates considered resigning, four current and former Justice Department officials said, but she concluded that doing so would only defer a difficult decision to a temporarily successor.
That dilemma was foreshadowed two years ago in her confirmation hearing, when Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who is poised to become the next attorney general, questioned whether Ms. Yates had the independent streak needed to be the Justice Department’s second in command.
“If the views the president wants to execute are unlawful, should the attorney general or the deputy attorney general say no?” Mr. Sessions asked.
“I believe the attorney general or deputy attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and Constitution and give their independent legal advice to the president,” Ms. Yates replied.“I believe the attorney general or deputy attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and Constitution and give their independent legal advice to the president,” Ms. Yates replied.
As acting attorney general on Monday, Ms. Yates faced what she believed to be the realization of that hypothetical. Shortly after 9 p.m. on Monday, roughly three hours after she ordered department lawyers not to defend the president’s position, a White House courier arrived with a copy of her dismissal letter.
President Trump’s own words convinced her that his executive order on immigration was intended to single out Muslims, senior officials said. Hours after she refused to defend that order, Mr. Trump fired her. “Dear Deputy Attorney General Yates,” said the letter, which was signed by John DeStefano, an assistant to Mr. Trump. “I am informing you that the president has removed you from the office of Deputy Attorney General of the United States.”
Ms. Yates, 56, a relative newcomer to Washington, has become a hero to many on the left and the face of a simmering resistance inside the government to Mr. Trump’s administration.
After receiving a hand-delivered dismissal letter, she packed up her office around midnight and left the department, a politically divisive moment in a career that until now had earned her bipartisan praise.
“She will be a hero of the American people, a hero of what’s right,” Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, said in 2015 at her confirmation hearing. “She’ll call them like she sees them, and she will be fair, and she will be just.”
Now it is Democrats hailing her as a hero.
While Ms. Yates was a reliably liberal voice on issues of civil rights, criminal justice and sentencing, she worked her way up as a career prosecutor in Atlanta under political appointees from both parties. She led prosecutions against some of the city’s most high-profile defendants, including Bill Campbell, a former Democratic mayor who was accused of racketeering and tax fraud, and Eric Robert Rudolph, who set bombs at a park during the 1996 Olympic Games, a gay nightclub and two Southern abortion clinics.
She also took on the leaders of an Atlanta suburb who refused to allow construction of a mosque. The Justice Department sued and the city reversed itself.
“Religious freedom requires that local government decisions impacting the exercise of that freedom be free of discrimination,” Ms. Yates said at the time.
In Washington, Ms. Yates’s outgoing personality made her a counterpoint to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who is more reserved. At times, that made Ms. Yates the face of the Justice Department in ways that caused tension with the attorney general’s staff. Ms. Yates was regarded as professionally ambitious, though she has told friends that she has no interest in running for political office.
Her firing capped three days of internal deliberations at the Justice Department. Like many others in the government, Ms. Yates, was caught by surprise Friday night by Mr. Trump’s executive order temporarily stopping all refugees from entering the country and indefinitely blocking immigration or visits from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
The Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department had reviewed the order and signed off on its legality. But Ms. Yates and her staff lawyers believed that the department had to consider the intent of the order, which she said appeared intended to single out people based on religion.
“We have comments from the president about what this is supposed to do,” Ms Yates said in one meeting on Monday, according to two people involved in the discussions. She later added, “The intent was clear from the face of it.”
Mr. Trump had campaigned on a promise to single out Muslims for immigration restrictions. One of his advisers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said in an interview that Mr. Trump wanted a Muslim ban but needed “the right way to do it legally.” Mr. Trump said in a later interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that Christian refugees would be given priority for entry visas to the United States.
In meetings on Monday, some lawyers believed the department should defend the order, as it normally does. Others disagreed. Ms. Yates considered resigning, the officials said, but concluded that doing so would leave the decision to whomever succeeded her, even if in a temporary capacity.
So on Monday evening, she issued a stinging rebuke of the president and ordered government lawyers not to defend the ban in court, where it is being contested.
“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,” Ms. Yates wrote in a letter to lawyers at the Justice Department, referring to her obligations as acting attorney general.
When Ms. Yates became deputy attorney general in 2015, she told colleagues that she had no intention of merely being a caretaker. “We’re going to run through the tape,” she often said.
Ms. Yates’s departure was imminent regardless of Monday’s events. She was running the department only until the Senate confirmed a replacement. Her order was in effect for only a matter of hours before a White House courier arrived at the Justice Department with a handwritten letter.
“Dear Deputy Attorney General Yates,” the letter said. “I am informing you that the president has removed you from the office of Deputy Attorney General of the United States.” It was signed by John DeStefano, an assistant to Mr. Trump.
That her dismissal was presaged at her confirmation hearings is even more notable because the senator encouraging her to stand up to the president is now in line to become attorney general. Mr. Sessions, an immigration hard-liner, argued that the Justice Department should have refused to support Mr. Obama’s executive action liberalizing immigration policy.
Ms. Yates promised that she would stand up to the president, if necessary.
Last year, Ms. Yates and Ms. Lynch earned the ire of Democrats — including many in the department — for not intervening and prohibiting the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, from sending a letter to Congress in the final days of the presidential campaign. The letter raised the prospect of new and potentially damaging evidence against Hillary Clinton related to an investigation that had been closed. Nothing came of the new evidence, and Mrs. Clinton’s team says the letter cost her the presidency. Her supporters argued that Justice Department leaders were too timid to stand up to Mr. Comey.
Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., a Democrat, posted a photograph of Ms. Yates on Twitter late Monday and said, “This is what skill, judgment and courage look like.”
Republicans disagreed, including George J. Terwilliger III, a former deputy attorney general who, like Ms. Yates, briefly served as acting attorney general. “In a legal dispute in our adversary system concerning an executive order, the attorney general’s and the Justice Department’s responsibility is to be an advocate for the president’s position,” he said.
He said Ms. Yates’s actions “makes her and the Justice Department look blatantly political.”