Is this your legal opinion? Would you mind sharing your credentials?
The Executive Order didn’t stand up to a legal challenge (at least how it was being interpreted) on the very first day. The Attorney General was the lead prosecutor on the Eric Rudolf case. A republican senator called her a “hero.”
I’m not sure why you are so confident of the legality of the executive order: and I’m not sure why we should trust your judgement over that of someone who has been working in the legal framework of the United States government at the highest of levels for decades.
Again: is this your legal opinion? Can you cite an example of an Attorney General having done this in the past? A single example?
This is a ridiculous standard. Utter nonsense. The Attorney General of the United States of fucking America most certainly needs to hold themselves to a higher standard than making an “argument that the clerks won’t snicker at.”
…Joe Biden is famously on record on how often he would have disagreements with Obama. Thisis what happened when Obama’s Attorney General disagreed with him. He didn’t fire Lynch. He let her objections stand.
That is what you should be expecting from your President. Someone who surrounds themselves with people who will disagree with them and will listen and accept a different point of view, but will be decisive when they need to be.
So you really think if Obama made and publically announced a decision and Lynch subsequently sent a message to all DOJ staff that she disagreed with Obama and no DOJ should act in accordance with Obama policy, that Obama would have welcomed that as accepting a different point of view? This is ludicrous, and Obama would have sacked her immediately (in that purely hypothetical situation, since Lynch would never have done such a thing).
Trump himself has said he would accept the viewpoint of his appointees over his own in some cases (e.g. waterboarding) which is comparable to what Lynch did. But that’s not the same thing as overt defiance after a decision has already been made.
Yates only did it because she’s an ideological opponent of Trump and an Obama holdover, which shows the risks of leaving such people in position.
…do you think that Obama would release an Executive Order without review from the Attorney General? If Trump had run it past the Attorney General’s office first this wouldn’t have happened.
Trump himself is a fucking compulsive liar. The “decision that had already been made” should have been made after review from the Attorney General.
This is simply your opinion, which you are free to assert, which differs from mine.
Attorney General, yes. Acting Attorney General, holdover from previous administration, no.
[For some reason the Democrats are agitated over the notion that Sessions might have been consulted about this. Apparently he wasn’t, but if he had been that would be a Bad Thing …]
…I disagree. Any president, not just Obama, would have put this executive order up for review by the senior legal counsel for the United States of America. Even if they were only “acting.” Because not to put the order up for review is a bone-headed move. It didn’t even stand up to a legal challenge on its very first day for goodness sake’s.
…Sally Yates has been confirmed by the Senate. By all accounts she has done her job diligently and professionally under different administrations. Why do you think she would have been unable to do her job here?
Yates was of the opinion she could not legally defend this order. Do you think she was wrong?
And as Yates correctly states: the review by the OLC was limited in scope.
Just to leave you a little food for thought, imagine that a Democrat wins in 2020 and until the new AG is confirmed, Jeff Sessions or his assistant stays on. Meanwhile the President loses no time overturning various Trump executive orders or issuing new ones. He consults with legal advisors that he trusts, but does not consult with Sessions or his former deputy. You apparently think that’s a big problem, and conversely that if Sessions sends out a memo to the DOJ announcing that no one is to enforce the president’s orders, then he’s a big hero.
…we are talking about the future of the most powerful nation in the world. I don’t think its silly to argue about it at all.
Your attempts at understanding “how I think” are laughable.
The Attorney General is employed at the President’s pleasure and can be dismissed at any time for any reason. If Trump didn’t trust Yates enough to have her review an executive order then why did he allow her to be acting Attorney General?
At every single layer this is an absolute clusterfuck.