Name: Sally Yates Explains Her Stance on the Muslim Travel Ban
Uploaded: 2017-10-11
Duration: 5 min 30 s
Description: “I felt like I needed to do my job, and doing my job meant saying no.”

So then the next A after your last meeting with them again you hear about the travel ban how did you hear about the Actually it was the same. The same, the day before I had a meeting. There should be a movie made about this some day. The ten days and in fact and what's kind of funny about this, is that the normal tradition, During this time, is that everything stays status quo. Nothing happens, Nothing happens. Everything stays status quo during a holdover time. The deal is that none of the Obama administration policies or positions and cases would change during the time I was acting. You wouldn't make policy. And likewise, I'm going to. Haul off and do new policy pronouncements, we keep everything status quo, and, in fact, my chief of staff had told me that things were gonna be so quiet, there'd be time for a lot of long boozy lunches during this time. [ LAUGH ] You didn't have ->> That was a joke, just in case anybody [ CROSSTALK ] In those ten days, how many boozy lunches did you have in those ten days? No, there was a boozy lunch or two after this one's off. After. [ LAUGH ] Okay so, same day you hear about the travel ban, how did you hear about the travel ban ?>> It was Friday. Thursday I had been over there, initially, talking with Mr. McGhann, and then Friday afternoon, I was back again. And it was late in the afternoon and I was going back to Atlanta because my husband was gonna be receiving an award at an event on Saturday night And I'm in the car on the way to the airport and I get a call from a principle deputy I was able to keep one assistant with me. Did you know it was one of those calls. It was he said after you left, I mean it's kind of like the cat's away so now we start catching up our moves and he said I went to the New York times website, And I just read that President Trump has initiated some sort of travel ban directed at six Muslim majority countries. I mean we hadn't heard anything about this. Normal course of things, the attorney General would probably be apprised of a decision like this before it's Made public. The normal course of things, the attorney general would have an opportunity to have input. To say don't do this. Into a decision like this. And the main reason being that the Department of Justice is charged then with defending this. And in fact, we had to have lawyers in court the very next morning, Saturday morning, because there were people who were literally mid- air When the travel ban was signed that then could not come into the country. Because I know we've been through several iterations. This was travel ban one that I made my decision on that actually applied to green card holders, LPRs, lawful permanent residents and to valid visa holders. And they were then being turned away. So this is a critical moment in the ten days because this had happened, you hadn't been advised, you clearly didn't approve of it. Do you want to say why you didn't approve of it? Well, yeah, this was something from Friday late Friday afternoon through to Monday. We're trying to get our arms around. What it is. What it is. What they were trying to accomplish. What the parameters were. We're looking at legal challenges. Long story short cuz I know you've got other panels you need to get to here. Called everybody in from the department, the Trump appointees and the career people to talk through. How we would defend this, both from a lawfulness standpoint, whether it was consistent with the Immigration Nationality Act, and from a constitutionality standpoint and I can't go through the internal discussions of DOJ, I'm sure you can understand that but I was not convinced at the end of this discussion That it was, in fact, lawful or constitutional. So critical moment, because at that point, you do have a choice. The administration has done something that you cannot, in good faith, support. And you weren't given the opportunity to make that clear in advance. There are two things you can do, one is, I'm out of here. I can't do this anymore. I can't do my job as the President's Acting Attorney General, or to what you did do, which is say, we're not gonna do it. Yeah. How did you make that decision? Yeah, and that was the quandary actually. And I'm sure it's not unlike Probably high stakes decisions that you all have made in your professions in a very compressed period of time. You don't do it just in those hours or couple of days that you had. You're drawing on your experiences and judgements from the prior 20 years that had been at DOJ. But sort of bottom line here's what it came down to. One option was yeah you're right, I could say I'm out of here, you guys figure this out, I'm not gonna be part of this and I felt like that would have protected my personal integrity but it would not have protected the integrity of the department of justice because for us to advance the defense in this case it would have require the department of justice to argue That religion had absolutely nothing to do with the travel ban, and that was something that I did not believe to be grounded in truth. And so, it felt like that would be the easy way out. And I actually thought back to my confirmation hearing, when there were several senators that were asking me if, the President asked you to do something, that's unlawful or unconstitutional Will you say no? They didn't ask me, will you resign? They said will you say no. So sort I felt like I needed to do my job and doing my job in this instance would say no. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Sally Yates Explains Her Stance on the Muslim Travel Ban

Leadership

“I felt like I needed to do my job, and doing my job meant saying no.”