Sally Yates

Sally Quillian Yates (born Sally Caroline Quillian; August 20, 1960) is an American lawyer. From 2010 to 2015, she was United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. In 2015, she was appointed United States Deputy Attorney General by President Barack Obama. Following the inauguration of President Donald Trump and the departure of Attorney General Loretta Lynch at noon on January 20, 2017, Yates served as acting United States Attorney General for 10 days.

Trump dismissed Yates for insubordination on January 30, after she instructed the Justice Department not to make legal arguments defending Executive Order 13769, which temporarily banned the admission of refugees and barred travel from certain Muslim-majority countries (later to include North Korea and Venezuela) on the grounds that terrorists were using the U.S. refugee resettlement program to enter the country. The ban was labeled as a "Muslim ban" by both Trump and his campaign's website. Rather than defend it, Yates stated the order was neither defensible in court nor consistent with the Constitution. Although large portions of the order were initially blocked by federal courts, the Supreme Court ultimately upheld a revised version.

Following her dismissal, Yates returned to private practice. She was considered a candidate for Attorney General in the Biden administration.

Early life

Yates was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to John Kelley Quillian (1930–1986), an attorney and judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals between 1966 and 1984, and his wife, Xara "Mickey" DeBeaugrine Quillian (née Terrell; 1931–2012), an interior designer. Her grandmother had been one of the first women admitted to the Georgia Bar; however, she was not hired as an attorney, instead working as a legal secretary for Yates's grandfather.

Yates went to Dunwoody High School and attended the University of Georgia, receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1982. In 1986, she earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Georgia School of Law, graduating magna cum laude. While in law school, Yates was the executive editor of the Georgia Law Review.

Career

In 1986, Yates was admitted to the State Bar of Georgia. From 1986 to 1989, Yates was an associate at the law firm King & Spalding in Atlanta, specializing in commercial litigation.

Federal prosecutor

In 1989, Yates was hired as Assistant U.S. Attorney by Bob Barr for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia. Early in her career at the Department of Justice, Yates prosecuted a variety of types of cases including white-collar fraud and political corruption. In 1994, she became Chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption Section. She was the lead prosecutor in the case of Eric Rudolph, who committed the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, a terrorist convicted for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured over 120 others. She rose to First Assistant U.S. Attorney in 2002 and to Acting U.S. Attorney in 2004. In the U.S. Attorney's office she held leadership positions under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

President Barack Obama nominated Yates to be U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia. She was confirmed by the Senate on March 10, 2010. Yates was the first woman to hold that position in the Northern District of Georgia. During her time as a U.S. Attorney, Yates was appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to be Vice Chair of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee.

Deputy Attorney General

On May 13, 2015, the United States Senate voted 84–12 (4 not voting) to confirm Yates as Deputy Attorney General of the United States, the second-highest-ranking position in the Justice Department; during her confirmation hearing, when questioned by Senator Jeff Sessions if she would disobey a president's unlawful orders, she responded that she would have an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution, and to give independent legal advice to the president. She served under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who took office shortly before Yates's confirmation.

As Deputy Attorney General, Yates was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department, which included approximately 113,000 employees. In 2015, she authored the policy, known as the "Yates memo", prioritizing the prosecution of executives for corporate crimes. During the final days of the Obama administration, she oversaw the review of 16,000 petitions for executive clemency, making recommendations to the President.

Acting Attorney General

In January 2017, according to a Justice Department spokesman, Yates accepted a request from the incoming Trump administration to be acting Attorney General, beginning on January 20, 2017, and until the successor for Attorney General Lynch would be confirmed by the Senate.

On January 5, 2017, Yates, together with then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed Obama on Russia-related matters in the Oval Office. In subsequent days of the new presidency, Yates warned the Trump administration that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had not been truthful about his contacts with Russia related to sanctions and that he was vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence. Yates' warning was not immediately acted upon until it was leaked by a senior United States government official who unmasked Flynn during the last days of Obama administration to The Washington Post, which publicly reported her warning on February 13, 2017. Flynn resigned within hours.

On January 27, 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13769, which restricted travel to the United States from seven Muslim majority countries, among other provisions. While the executive order had been approved as to "form and legality" by the Department of Justice's Legal Counsel, Yates ordered the Justice Department not to defend the order because she believed the order to be unlawful. Her decision came after several federal courts had issued stays on various parts of the order to stop their implementation, and many U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents had acted in defiance of those stays. In a letter to DOJ staff, Yates wrote:

At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities of the Department of Justice, nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful...I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution's solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right. For as long as I am the acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of th[is] executive order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so.

In a New York Times editorial published on July 28, 2017, Yates expressed concern about Trump's political influence on the Justice Department, writing "President Trump's actions appear aimed at destroying the fundamental independence of the Justice Department. ... Its investigations and prosecutions must be conducted free from any political interference or influence. ... The very foundation of our justice system—the rule of law—depends on it."

Dismissal

Upon announcing her decision not to defend the order, Yates was immediately dismissed by the Trump administration via hand-delivered letter, and replaced with Dana Boente, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, later in the evening on January 30, 2017. Before President Donald Trump signed an executive order appointing Boente to replace Yates, Channing D. Phillips, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, served as acting attorney general for a few hours that evening in the meantime pursuant to Executive Order 13762 titled “Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Justice” that was signed by President Barack Obama on January 13, 2017 and published in the Federal Register on January 19, 2017. After taking office, Boente ordered the Justice Department to enforce the executive order.

In a White House statement, Yates was said to have "betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States" and to be "an Obama administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration."

Shortly thereafter, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Daniel Ragsdale was demoted and replaced by Thomas Homan with Ragsdale remaining as deputy director.

Reactions

Some legal experts argued that Yates should have resigned, rather than directing the Justice Department not to defend the executive order, which Cato Institute scholar Josh Blackman called "a textbook case of insubordination". A number of legal scholars praised Yates for standing up against what they perceived as an unconstitutional executive order. Many also believed the rhetoric of "betrayal" Trump used in his letter was unnecessarily incendiary.

In response to her decision not to defend the order, former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted that he trusted her judgment.