find an attorney by name

after the acting attorneygeneral, sally yates, addressed trump's immigration executiveorder and claimed she would not defend it because she believesit's unlawful, donald trump decided to take matters into hisown hands and fired her. he fired her and replaced herimmediately with another individual by the name of danaboente, the u.s. attorney for the eastern district ofvirginia. this should raise red

flags considering the fact thatthe general attorney is not supposed to be someone who justagrees with everything the president does, it's supposed tobe an individual who interprets the law and gives the executivebranch advice based on what is and isn't lawful. part of thereason why is because they want to avoid lawsuits and thingslike that. yates, according to a white house letter, had --

>>to give you some moreinformation about her replacement -- >>i should note that boente hasbeen open about the fact that he plans on defending trump'simmigration order, that is precisely the reason he will bethe acting attorney general until jeff sessions getsconfirmed. >>attorneys general are supposedto be independent, but they are picked by the president and willoften go along with what the president wants.

for exampleeric holder under obama, the president didn't want the banksprosecuted so holder didn't prosecute any of them, superobvious. under bush, he wanted a lot of district attorneys tofind voter fraud. a lot of them couldn't find voter fraud andthey said i looked, i'm a republican, you appointed me, icouldn't find it, and those guys would either get fired ordemoted, that became a scandal.

but from time to time they dostand up, whether it is the republican district attorneyswho said you want me to find it but there is no voter fraud, or,funny enough, james comey when he was the number two in thejustice department to attorney general john ashcroft, and whenashcroft was in the hospital and the bush administration wantedthe justice department to do something they perceived to beillegal, james comey stood up and said we will not authorizethat, that is illegal and we won't do it.

so yates now issaying something like comey did, i think this order is illegal,so i'm going to tell the people who work under me in the justicedepartment to not follow it because that is myconstitutional duty. >>right. again, it's importantfor the president to listen to the legal advice of the attorneygeneral, otherwise there is really no point in having anattorney general. you are

supposed to accept the legalanalysis of this individual, and of course trump just doesn'tlike the fact that she doesn't agree, so he fired herimmediately. boente is more than willing to work with trump andjust agree with this immigration policy. he says -- >>of course there was also the1973 situation where richard nixon said, that specialprosecutor investigating me, i'm

bothered by him -- because itturns out he's right -- so he ordered the attorney general tofire him, he wouldn't, so nixon and fired the attorney general,then the deputy attorney general also wouldn't follow the illegalorder and also was fired, that was known as the saturday nightmassacre. some are now calling this the monday night massacre. some people including a person who is one of the higher-ups atimmigration was also fired.

they say that that firing was more inthe works, it wasn't just because of something thathappened immediately. remember those people at the statedepartment also stepped down, a huge number of them. there is apolicy angle to this which you might be surprised to find outi'm a little mixed on -- i wish she had based her decision onthe fact that they were not

following federal court orders. >>that's right. there were atleast four federal courts that issued at least partial stays inregard to this immigration ban. so you're right, she could haveused that to strengthen her argument but she didn't, i thinkthat worked against her. >>let me break it down this way. on the issue of the legality there are two differentcomponents, the order itself is

a travel ban that is arguablyillegal or unconstitutional, but it is arguable. first off, ifyou just said as president obama did in 2011, we have a specificsituation here where we have let people into the country who wejust found out planted a roadside bomb back in 2005 iniraq against our troops, so we won't do a complete banlike trump did, and we won't do it based on religion like trump,trump said he's prioritizing christians, but from just thiscountry we will slow immigration

until we can figure out if thesame loophole they use to get in is being used by anyone else. but during that six-month period it was not a hard ban, peoplewere still being admitted. but can the president control theflow of immigration from certain countries? as a generalprinciple, yes, so the order could be legal.

on the otherhand if the president said i'm going to target predominatelyblack countries and prioritize white people from south africaand former rhodesia, if you want to go back that far, and i'mgoing to de-prioritize black people because we have a problemwith them and we have to figure out what's going on before welet black people into the country -- if he said that thenyou would have significant issues with illegal orunconstitutional actions. if she

had made a better case for whythis is closer to i'm not letting blacks in, and not closeto the 2011 order, okay, i think she would have been on moresolid ground. i wish she had spent more time expanding that alittle bit. but secondly, the second component, is who decideswhether it's illegal or unconstitutional? that part isclear, it's the courts.

an attorney general can say untilthe courts sorted out, until we figure out what's going on here,until they do, i'm going to let the courts decide whether weshould proceed as they are sorting it out. and the courtshave decided, a stay means don't act on this order, it is nowillegal to act on this order until we have final adjudicationthrough the court system. >>for me that is the mostconcerning part of all of this. there are many elements to thestory that i think people should

be concerned about -- the factthat sally yates gets fired just because she disagrees withdonald trump, the fact that the rollout of this executive orderwas lacking any and all nuance and led to a lot of confusion,people are still wondering whether this will impact greencard holders, that is an issue as well. but for me the partthat concerns me is the fact that there are four federalcourts who, again, have issued at least partial stays and thetrump administration has

essentially said we don't care,we are moving forward. so you're right, we should allow thefederal courts to adjudicate it, a status mean they've alreadydecided it's unlawful or unconstitutional and he can'tmove forward, but we need to know what he plans to do andhow, and whether or not it's constitutional. >>she might have based it on allthat, i just wish she had said that publicly.

for example nowwe have reporting in from today that they are still holding 100people at l.a.x. but they have been ordered by federal courtsnot to hold these people. that is the law of the land and trumpsays i don't care about the law, that's when an attorney generalsales, and she did, again i wish she had clarified better, youhave a federal court order -- it's up to five courts now --five courts have told you you

can't hold those people, theorder has been stayed. means it is not in effect. ifyou want me to say it's in effect i would be in violationof federal court orders and i'm not going to do that because i'ma lawyer, in fact i'm the top lawyer as acting attorneygeneral. that is on the policy end. on the political end idon't have good news for us.

i think this will play well, notjust for his base but for people in the middle. progressives canstand him, this isn't the straw that broke the camel's back, thecamel was already obliterated. but he will seem strong anddecisive, i gave you in order and you didn't follow it, justlike at the end of celebrity apprentice you're fired. >>but what about him ignoringthe courts?

will that play well with independent voters? >>that's a great question aboutpolitics, and that depends on the democrats. if the democratskeep getting distracted and it's understandable, given how manythings he's doing out there 100 miles an hour, and lose focus onwhat the important parts are -- you've got to build a good case,what the democrats should be doing is, follow court ordersotherwise what you're doing is

illegal and there is only oneremedy for a president who is acting illegally and thatimpeachment. you already have 20 republicans who have voicedconcern about the ban, which is unusual for republicans, yes? you need those guys if you are going to put real pressure --not to say that you're going to impeach trump tomorrow, but toput pressure on him to say oh, i see how this is costing mepolitically.

democrats, focus on the court orders. they areamazing in their incompetence. that's part of the reason westarted justice democrats, strong progressives make thesemistakes.