plaintiffs want in the washington case. they asked for up to a year of discovery and up to 30 depositions to find out exactly what was in the heads and motives of the people framing this and that is the road that in mandel the supreme court clearly said it was not going to go down subject to the nary bad faith exception where you have an affirmative showing of bad faith. here you would need official capacity statements unequivocal post inauguration to show president and members of the cabinet were acting in bad faith. let me ask the same question that my friend robert king asked you a week ago. has the president ever disavowed his campaign statements? has he stood up and said i said before i wanted to ban all members of the islamic faith from entering the united states of america. i was wrong. i consulted with lawyers.
justification? judge gould, that s the number of the case. and that s mandel. right? in mandel, justice justice mars if you will take even the briefest peek behind the reason that the attorney general has given you will see that it s not really why they denied him. they really denied him because he was a communist and he wanted to give lectures on communism. the court said we are not going to look at any of the evidence. this is rational basis review. is it bona fide? does it bury rational to what the court has done. this court has said this rational basis review. i think the benefit of that standard is it doesn t call on courts to make these sorts of determinations that they are ill equipped to do. the flip side is what the
let s listen in. i just want to point out, i mean, if you really take their argument seriously, i think they re committed to the view that under 1182f, even if the president got actionable intelligence tomorrow that let s say a libyan national are attempting to enter the country but the president didn t know his identity to commit a terrorist act, they would say, the president can t suspend entry because that s a nationality based distinction. that would race constitutional concerns. courts have never read the statutes to conflict in that way. solicitor general wall, if i could interject a question on the merits here. the executive order sets out national security justifications. but how is a court to know if, in fact, it s a muslim ban in the guise of national security
you can see he is a good lawyer and was really trying to keep narrowing the focus of the court. the reason to that is obvious to anyone who watches politics. you heard about the muslim ban. the trump administration is worried that this is a wider revuk they could lose. thank you for helping us to understand what we just witnessed. i want to bring in jeremy peters, new york times political reporter. thanks to both of you for being here. jeremy, you are reminded when you watch these extraordinary developments and get to see what is happening. this was one of the president s key agenda items, this travel ban. the fact that it has been hung up in the courts sort of a metaphor for a lot of his agenda. and the haste with which this order was drafted and carried
like this that were attributing i think you know right then you re not anywhere approaching it. i cannot imagine that any court would say that the justification how do you apply the facially legitimate standard to an executive order like that? and you are watching oral arguments in the 9th circuit court of appeals in seattle. extraordinary that they have made this decision to allow cameras so that we can watch this live. you just witnessed a critical moment when judge gould asked a question how is the court to know if this is effectively a muslim ban in the national security justification and asked if the president ever disavowed campaign statements and did call for a muslim ban. joining me now is msnbc s chief