Name: Sally Yates Explains Her Decision on Trump's Travel Ban
Uploaded: 2017-05-25
Duration: 6 min 10 s
Description: Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates explained her stance on Trump's travel banto Harvard Law School’s graduating class.

[ MUSIC ] You never know when a situation will present itself when you're gonna have to decide who you are and what you stand for. The defining moments in our lives often don't come with advance warning. That can arise in scenarios we would have never expected, and they don't come sometimes with the luxury with a whole lot of time to go inside yourself for some serious introspection. So how do you prepare for all of that? You're type A people, I know that, you wanna be prepared. I had such an experience recently with the travel ban. As you heard, it's a tradition at the Department of Justice for the Deputy Attorney General to stay on during the transition between administrations. And that's for good reason. It's important to have continuity and so I agreed to stay on as acting Attorney General until President Trump's Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, could be confirmed. It was supposed to be an uneventful time. We had agreed with the incoming team that while I was the acting Attorney General, things would stay just as they were. No positions of the department of justice would stay changed, everything would stay status quo, always is in the car, went into the airport laid in the afternoon on friday January 27th when l learned from media report Did the president had signed an executive order restricting travel from seven muslim- majority countries Even though this was the very first we had heard of this we were going to have to have DOJ lawyers and courts all over the country defending it within a matter of hours and On monday I learned that we had to take a position at the department on the constitutionality of the order. This is not what I was expecting. My former chief of staff had jokingly told me that during the short time that I was acting AG, I would have time for, these are her words, a lot of long boozy lunches. [ LAUGH ] As we expected that everything was going to be quiet during this time. But I can tell you, there wasn't time for lunches at all, boozy or otherwise. [ LAUGH ] Now, don't worry. I'm not about to launch into an exhausting discussion of constitutional law or immigrational law. And I appreciate that people of goodwill can have very different views both on the legality of the order and what I should have done in this scenario. But I do think that its illustrative of an unexpected moment when the law and conscience intersected And the decision had to be made on a very short period of time. After revealing the legal challenges and reading cases and conforming with the DIJ lawyers. I came to the conclusion that defending the constitutionality travel ban would require the Department of Justice To argue that the executive order had nothing to do with religion. That it was not intended to disfavor Muslims. And this was despite the numerous prior statements that had been made by the president and his surrogates regarding his intent to effectuate a Muslim ban. I believed that this would require us to advance a pretext. A defense not grounded in truth. And so I directed the Department of Justice not to defend the ban. I appreciate that some belief that i should've just resigned instead of ordering the Department not to defend a travel ban and And that's a fair question. I grappled with that all over the weekend and during the day on Monday. But I believed then and I believe now that resigning would have protected my personal integrity, but it would not have protected the integrity of the Department of Justice. DOJ isn't just another law firm and this wasn't just any legal issue. It was about the core founding principle of religious freedom and I couldn't in good conscience send DOJ lawyers into court to advance an argument that the travel ban was unrelated to religion When the evidence of intent reflected that that was not the case. Now, there wasn't much time to make, to examine the weighty Constitutional law concepts that were implicated here. Nor was there a lot of time to craft the directive that we ultimately issued to the department. But I didn't make this decision just within the 72 hours. From the time I learned of the ban until I issued the decision. That decision was the result of what others had taught me over my entire 27 years with the Department of Justice. I drew on the lessons of mentors, who while I was in AUSA had instilled in me a reverence For the privilege of representing the people of the United States, and upholding the law and the constitution. From the judges who widely expected DOJ lawyers to be held higher standards. Then lawyers representing private litigants because after all. We were the department of justice. Over the course of your life and your career, you two will face weighty decisions, where the law and conscience intertwine. And while it may not play out in such a public way, the conflict that you'll feel will be no less real, and the consequences Of your decision also significant. The time for introspection is all along the way. To develop the sense of who you are and what you are staying for because you never know when you are gonna be called to answer that question. [ MUSIC ]

Sally Yates Explains Her Decision on Trump's Travel Ban

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates explained her stance on Trump's travel banto Harvard Law School’s graduating class.