The White House announced that acting Attorney General Sally Yates has been fired because she told the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s immigration ban. A statement from the press secretary said, “The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel. Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.”

Trump signed an executive order last Friday afternoon, prohibiting refugees and citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the U.S. Since then. Federal judges across the country have issued stays limiting the order and lawsuits have mounted against it.

The rollout of the ban—which Rudy Giuliani says Trump has referred to as a “Muslim ban”—was reportedly chaotic, according to the NY Times, Secretary of Homeland Security Gen. John Kelly was getting his first briefing about the order on a conference call when “halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office. ‘The president is signing the executive order that we’re discussing,’ the official said, stunned.”

White House officials in the meantime insisted to reporters at a briefing that Mr. Trump’s advisers had been in contact with officials at the State and Homeland Security Departments for “many weeks.” One official added, “Everyone who needed to know was informed.” But that apparently did not include members of the president’s own cabinet.
Jim Mattis, the new secretary of defense, did not see a final version of the order until Friday morning, only hours before Mr. Trump arrived to sign it at the Pentagon. Mr. Mattis, according to administration officials familiar with the deliberations, was not consulted by the White House during the preparation of the order and was not given an opportunity to provide input while the order was being drafted. Last summer, Mr. Mattis sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration as a move that was “causing us great damage right now, and it’s sending shock waves through the international system.”

Apparently Customs and Border Patrol only got “limited written instructions,” the Times reports, “about what to do at airports and border crossings” at 3 a.m. on Saturday. “People at the agency were blindsided, [a CBP officer] said, and are still trying to figure things out, even as people are being stopped from coming into the United States. ‘If the secretary doesn’t know anything, how could we possibly know anything at this level?’ the officer said, referring to Mr. Kelly.”

Now Politico reports that while Trump’s top aides “quietly worked with senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee to draft the executive order curbing immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations… the Republican committee chairman and party leadership were not informed. Their work on the executive order meant the small group of staffers — conservative immigration hard-liners who, sources say, are close with attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) — were among the only people on Capitol Hill who knew of the looming controversial policy.”

The new acting Attorney General is Dana Boente, whose Wikipedia entry was briefly edited:

Of course, the move invoked another former Republican president, Richard Nixon, and his “Saturday Night Massacre”:

And here’s what a former Nixon staffer said:

Everything is fine.

Here’s the full statement from the White House:

The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.

Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.

It is time to get serious about protecting our country. Calling for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.

Tonight, President Trump relieved Ms. Yates of her duties and subsequently named Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as Acting Attorney General until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons.

“I am honored to serve President Trump in this role until Senator Sessions is confirmed. I will defend and enforce the laws of our country to ensure that our people and our nation are protected,” said Dana Boente, Acting Attorney General.

“I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right,” Yates said in an email to lawyers of the Civil Division on Monday. “At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful,.”

“As long as I am the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.”

Yates’ Wikipedia entry was briefly revised: