Acting AG Sally Yates fired by Trump after refusing to defend Executive Order, Dana Boente installed until Jeff Sessions confirmed
The immigration Executive Order has now been the cause of turnover at the Department of Justice as President Trump fired acting AG Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover, for “refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” the White House said.
“(Yates) has betrayed the Department of Justice,” the White House statement said.
The president replaced Yates with Dana J. Boente, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, saying that he would serve as attorney general until Congress confirmed Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.
President Trump speaking in Philadelphia this morning photo/ screenshot
“I am honored to serve President Trump in this role until Senator Sessions is confirmed. I will defend and enforce the laws of our country to ensure that our people and our nation are protected,” said Dana Boente, Acting Attorney General.
In his first act in his new role, Boente announced that he was rescinding Yates’s order.
Moments after the move, the Trump administration lashed out: “Ms. Yates is an Obama administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration,” their statement said.
“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,” Yates wrote in a letter to Justice Department lawyers in her shocking rebuke of the President’s Order.
“It is time to get serious about protecting our country,” Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in the statement. He accused Democrats of holding up the confirmation of Mr. Sessions for political reasons. “Calling for tougher vetting for individuals traveling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.”
The NY Times echoed the outrage from the left, making comparisons to the Nixon administration: “Yates’s order was a remarkable rebuke by a government official to a sitting president, and it recalled the so-called Saturday Night Massacre in 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general for refusing to dismiss the special prosecutor in the Watergate case.”
Scale of Justice photo/DTR via wikimedia commons
