grounding this executive order at least for the next few days that sally yates is in office as the acting attorney general. as you know, jeff session is the nominee by president trump and awaiting confirmation by the senate. i ll read you part of an order she issued to her lawyers today saying my responsibility is to ensure the position of the justice department is not only legally defensible but informed by our best view of what the law is after consideration of all the facts. in addition i m responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution s solemn obligation to seek justice and stand for what is right. at present i m not convinced the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am i convinced that the executive order is lawful. wolf, this is a big deal for the attorney general, the acting attorney general sally yates to make this instruction to the justice department lawyers who really are responsib
truly extraordinary development, commissioner, that the acting attorney general won t, in effect, defend the president s orders? i ve known sally yates for many years. i worked with her when she was united states attorney in the atlanta year and i was the drug czar. she is a career prosecutor. she has never shown to me any sway one way or the other for political leanings. she s always been stand up for the law and people of this country. i happen to be here in boston now, i think many decades ago something called midnight massacre, which i know, wolf, you remember. i think of elliot richardson, and others fired by president nixon. i would hope that wouldn t happen to sally yates because she makes decisions based upon the facts and based pob the law.
so we re essentially playing into isis s hands and we often fall into this trap. more generally, as an american muslim myself, this targets very clearly muslims. it s right there in the text that there s an exemption for religious minorities who are not of the majority religion. the majority religion is whether or not? muslims. the last thing i will say is that three of the countries that are targeted, not just iraq but also syria and libya, nationals of these three countries who are on the front lines, muslims fighting isis and risking their lives. what message does that send to a syrian national or libyan national who is actually hates isis and wants to fight them and they are seeing the u.s. accepted this message. let s go back to the breaking news we re following first reported by cnn. evan perez reporting, the acting attorney general of the united states sally yates, has told
yates is doing the right thing. i think that s right. the justice department even though it s part of the executive branch there s a strong tradition of independence and of taking seriously their obligation to uphold the constitution, first and foremost. i think that s what you re seeing today in sally yates decision. i suspect she has a lot of support in the rank and file which is only going to complicate matters for president trump if he decides that before jeff sessions is confirmed, he fires her. laura coats is still with us. you were a former u.s. assistant attorney, and in the civil rights decision. you know a lot of these officials. how do you think they re going to react to the extraordinary news we re covering right now? i think they re extraordinarily relieved. they have some direction and guidance at how not to proceed. and most were scrambling friday and saturday at the airports and the other places trying to figure out what their role
relief. the real question is what happened with sally yates. she answers to president, nominee jeff sessions pending in the senate. going to see a lot of noise from the white house to speed up the confirmation of senator sessions and perhaps to not even let sally yates hang around long enough to let that happen. until that happens, wolf, we re going to have lawsuits going forward without the justice department necessarily responding and trying to argue that the executive order is lawful. the president can fire sally yates and bring in somebody else in a moment. could, hark bs back to saturday night massacre during nixon administration where he kept firing senior justice department officials until he found someone who would fire the special prosecutor. so i think with he could see that with sally yates being fired and see if there s anyone in the upper echelons of the justice department right now who is willing to actually reverse