Prosecutor fired by Trump endorses Democrat
2018 ELECTION
Democrat Steve Dettlebach got a high-profile endorsement Monday in his quest to be Ohio’s next attorney general.
Former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates was in Columbus to vouch for Dettelbach, the former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.
Yates said she knows Dettelbach because they both had served for years in the U.S. Justice Department and were both appointed U.S. attorneys by former President Barack Obama.
“I know from personal experience that there’s no one better qualified for this position than Steve is,” Yates said.
Dettelbach is running in 2018 to replace Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine, who is seeking the governor’s job. The only other announced candidate for attorney general is state Auditor Dave Yost, a Republican.
Yates has cut a high profile this year.
She served as acting attorney general after former Attorney General Loretta Lynch stepped down and before current Attorney General Jeff Sessions was confirmed. President Donald Trump fired Yates in January after she refused to enforce his first executive order banning travel to the United States from seven majorityMuslim countries.
Among her reservations, Yates said she worried that the ban violated constitutional protections against religious discrimination. The order itself didn’t specifically exclude Muslims, but on the campaign trail, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” CNN reported.
It and subsequent attempts at travel restrictions have largely been bottled up in the courts, but on Sunday, Trump announced a new set that would affect six majorityMuslim countries as well as North Korea and Venezuela.
Yates declined to comment on the issue on Monday, saying, “I’m here today to stay focused on Steve and his race, and I think I’m going to stay focused on that.”
Also in January, Yates warned the White House that Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, had lied about his Russian contacts and was vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow. The White House didn’t act on the warnings for 18 days.
Yates on Monday declined to comment on whether she had been interviewed by Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Even if I wasn’t here to focus on Steve, I wouldn’t answer that question,” she said.
For his part, Dettelbach said that he viewed the state attorney general’s office as a largely nonpartisan agency, although he criticized what he called DeWine’s slowness in suing opioid manufacturers. It wasn’t until this year that DeWine sued the drug companies, accusing them of having a hand in creating the state’s festering crisis.
Yates planned to appear at a $250-a-plate fundraiser Monday evening for Dettelbach in the upscale Cleveland neighborhood of Shaker Heights, according to an invitation obtained by Politico.