DOJ Office That Advises White House Approved Trump’s Travel Ban

President Donald Trump smiles as he speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017, to announce Judge Neil Gorsuch as his nominee for the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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The Justice Department office that typically advises the White House on legal actions, including executive orders, approved the controversial immigration executive order President Trump signed last week, BuzzFeed reported.

The Office of Legal Counsel memo, which BuzzFeed posted in full, gave a summary of the proposed executive order before concluding that order was approved “with respect to form and legality.” It was signed by Curtis Gannon, an acting assistant attorney general in charge of the OLC.

Trump’s order bans most immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries for 90 days and also pauses the U.S. refugee resettlement program. It provoked mass protests and numerous lawsuits, and even some Republicans criticized the administration for the hasty rollout. The then-acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, instructed the Justice Department not to defend the order in court, and Trump promptly fired her for the move.

For some time, it was unclear whether the OLC was reviewing this and other Trump executive orders.

Read the OLC memo below:

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. Approval was issued after order was issued. CYA, nothing more.

  2. I don’t think there’s anything known to man big enough to cover trumps fat ass.

  3. The BuzzFeed article contains a rather significant caveat.

    [A] DOJ spokesman said: “The Office of Legal Counsel’s form-and-legality paperwork includes a short description of some of the provisions of the proposed executive order and memorializes the conclusion that the proposed order is approved with respect to form and legality. As is generally the case under the Office’s longstanding practice, however, it does not identify or contain substantive analysis of issues that were evaluated in the course of the review.”

    Yates, being an experienced Justice Department lawyer, believed the order could not withstand a legal challenge, a conclusion that has been supported by several federal courts.

  4. And what do we actually know about Curtis Gannon, an acting assistant attorney general in charge of the OLC?

    A transplant from Breibart? President Bannons’s nephew?

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