NASHVILLE, Tenn. (OSBORNE) -- The former Acting U.S. Attorney General fired for refusing to defend President Donald Trump’s original travel ban says she fears the effect the administration is having on the nation.
Sally Yates was in Nashville this past week at the invitation of Vanderbilt University.
Yates served as AG for just ten days following Trump’s inauguration. When the president signed an executive order on immigration, Yates refused to defend it in court believing it was unconstitutional.
Yates told Vanderbilt Chancellor Nick Zeppos in a podcast interview that, like the rest of the country, she was taken by surprise by the president’s decision to ban travel from several Middle Eastern countries.
She notes that the Justice Department would normally have been involved in formulating any such policy, but that wasn’t the case with Trump’s executive order.
“So at that point we didn’t have an opportunity to give any input. It was a question of looking at, ‘Do we believe that this is lawful, so we believe that this is constitutional, and can we act consistently with the obligation of the Department of Justice in defending it?’”
Yates went on to tell Chancellor Zeppos that she fears Americans are starting to see as normal, what she calls the “daily barrage of alarming news.”
“I worry that we start to normalize some of this conduct. Our psyche becomes such that at the end of this administration we think some of this stuff is normal when it’s not.”
Would you like to listen to the complete interview with Sally Yates?