The Trump administration did not go it alone when crafting last Friday’s executive action on immigration from Middle Eastern and North African countries.
“The orders were drafted by a team of some of the most qualified and talented lawyers in the United States of America,” White House senior adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday evening.
“I had the privilege among many other staff at the White House of being involved in the review process, but the review process also included the Office of Legal Counsel and the Justice Department and many of those people who are careers [long-term employees] or presumably many of them who didn’t support President Trump cleared it and approved it as fully legal.”
Though they didn’t put it through the normal interagency comment process, President Trump’s transition team also relied on senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee to help write the executive order, according to a report published Monday evening.
Following Friday’s order to tighten protocols for visa programs in several majority-Muslim countries, including Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Iraq, Democrats speculated and journalists reported that that administration did not go about the normal interagency process before taking action.
That the White House talked with judiciary committee aides about how to go about writing the order came as news to Republican leaders in the House and Senate.
The aides signed nondisclosure agreements with the transition team as they worked on the president’s project between the election and inauguration, according to CNN.
The White House would not confirm to Politico whether it consulted congressional employees. The rollout of the order – one of 17 announced last week – was the responsibility of Miller and chief strategist Steve Bannon.
The order suspends refugee admissions from those seven nations for four months until the administration makes a conclusion about national security threat risks. Travelers from more than 40 other majority-Muslim countries are so far untouched by the order.
