Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General and Atlanta native Sally Yates expressed her outrage over President Donald Trump’s decision to ask for Attorney General Jeff Sessions' resignation.
“We should not lose sight of why POTUS fired the AG – because he wants a political crony to protect him from the investigation of his own campaign,” Yates tweeted. “The rule of law is disappearing before our eyes.”
She also linked to her column in the New York Times from a year ago about the importance of keeping the DOJ an independent body of government.
Sessions wrote a letter to White House chief of staff John Kelly Wednesday finalizing his resignation at Trump’s request.
“At your request I am submitting my resignation,” Sessions wrote.
Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’ former chief of staff, will take over as acting attorney general, Trump said.
Whitaker is expected to take charge of the Russia investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller, from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Whitaker has been openly critical of the Mueller investigation.
Democrats are calling on Whitaker to recuse himself from the investigation, as Sessions had.
Trump said a permanent replacement for Sessions will be nominated at a later date.
Yates served as U.S. deputy attorney general under former President Barack Obama and was dismissed for “insubordination’’ by Trump after his inauguration, after she instructed the Justice Department to not make any legal arguments defending his executive order that temporarily banned admission of refugees into the United States, and barred travel from certain Muslim-majority countries.
Yates stated the order was not defensible in court or consistent with the Constitution.
Large portions of the order were subsequently blocked by federal courts. A third version of Trump’s travel ban was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court after Hawaii and several other states challenged Trump’s proclamation.
