Sally Yates: I refused to defend Trump travel ban because it’s based on religion, not national security

“I came ultimately to the conclusion that our defending this travel ban would require me to send lawyers of the Justice Department to court to say this ban had nothing to do with religion – (that) it was all based on national security, nothing to do with religion,” Yates told attendees at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.

“And I did not believe that to be a defense that was grounded in truth and I couldn’t send Department of Justice lawyers in to defend something based on a defense that I did not believe was grounded in truth.”

The Obama-era deputy attorney general recalled finding out about the Trump travel ban by a colleague who read about it on the New York Times’ website on a Friday evening.

Yates then spent the duration of the weekend trying to learn more about the executive order, which Trump’s White House had crafted without Yates’ knowledge.

Yates sat down on Monday with lifetime civil department staffers, holdover employees from President Obama’s time in office and newly-hired Trump staff, and asked how they would defend the move to suspend immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

“We went around the table with my asking them, ‘All right, tell me why you think this is lawful? How are we going to defend this?'” Yates said. “Without revealing our internal discussions here, at the end of that, I was not comfortable that it was, in fact, lawful or constitutional and kept the senior Trump appointee back to tell him I was very uncomfortable where we were.”

Yates said she spoke with additional people before coming to her conclusion not to defend the president’s actions. She was in her position as acting attorney general when she was fired by Trump.