In January, shortly after Donald Trump issued the first version of his Muslim ban, Sally Yates circulated a letter around the Department of Justice, instructing them not to defend the executive order. Within a day, Yates was fired.
But not every attorney at the Justice Department agreed with Yates’ dismissal.
"I am so proud," Andrew Weissman, then a top prosecutor in the Justice Department's criminal division, wrote to then-acting Attorney General Yates after the move. "And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects."
Weissman is now on Robert Mueller’s investigative team, and the fact that he supported Yates at the time is being presented as a “problem.” The president of the conservative group Judicial Watch has called Weissman’s letter “disturbing” and proof that “the Mueller operation has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans? Shut it down.”
The problem with that is … Yates was right. She was more than right. That first version of the travel ban was almost immediately blocked by multiple judges and even the most casual review showed that it wasn’t an executive order about security—it was a deliberate attack on a single religion, in obvious violation of the Constitution and existing law.
Several other DOJ employees, including a national security division official and three then-US attorneys, also applauded Yates in emails sent to her after the decision. One longtime department lawyer went on to blast the Trump administration for "such contempt for democratic values and the rule of law."
Attempting to defend Trump’s order would have put the Justice Department into a position of joining an attempt to do an end run around the Constitution, one that was obviously doomed to fail. Weissman, and many others, stood with Yates, because Yates wasn’t just right: in keeping the Justice Department out of the fray, she avoided damaging the whole concept of American justice.
Trump would go through two more versions of the Muslim ban before he found one that would stick. And even though that third version was just allowed to go into effect by the Supreme Court—11 months later—the ruling still doesn’t argue that the ban is lawful. It just allows it to remain while encouraging courts to move quickly in hearing arguments. It’s still no guarantee that any of the federal courts involved will rule that the order is legal, even after it was substantially softened from the version Yates refused to defend.
Arguing that people who supported Yates—who was both their direct supervisor at the time, and making a move designed to uphold the principles of the Justice Department—is just the latest in increasingly long stretches that Trumpists are willing to make to find any reason to close Mueller’s investigation.