USA TODAY International Edition
No ‘ Monday Night Massacre,’ but ...
When Acting Attorney General Sally Yates said she could not in good conscience defend President Trump’s executive order barring refugees, he was well within his authority to fire the Obama administration holdover for her defiance.
This was not, as congressional Democrats rushed to assert, a “Monday Night Massacre” comparable to the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” in 1973, when the attorney general and his deputy refused President Nixon’s order to dismiss a special Watergate prosecutor investigating Nixon’s crimes.
Yet the Yates firing was disturbing because of the inflammatory manner in which it was handled.
Legal scholars disagree on whether Trump’s temporary refugee ban is constitutional. But the White House, using language tantamount to accusing the 27- year Justice Department veteran of treachery, said she “betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.” And the administration accused her, without citing any evidence, of being “weak on borders and very weak on il- legal immigration.”
Not honest disagreement. Betrayal!
Coming on the heels of Monday’s thuggish warning to State Department careerists from White House spokesman Sean Spicer — “I think that they should either get with the program or they can go” — the gratuitous attack on Yates reinforced the impression of a brook- no- dissent administration.
It’s an American value to dissent, and administrations benefit when people speak up. In fact, no less than Sen. Jeff Sessions, R- Ala., the nominee to be the next attorney general, recognized this during the 2015 confirmation hearing for Sally Yates.
“You think the attorney general has the responsibility to say no to the president if he asks for something that’s improper?” Sessions asked Yates. She responded that the attorney general has the obligation “to follow the law and the Constitution.”
If the Senate confirms Sessions to be the next attorney general, let’s hope he adheres to the principles enshrined in his questioning of Yates. He might well have to.