U.S. President Donald Trump fired the federal government's top lawyer Sally Yates on Monday after she took the extraordinarily rare step of defying the White House and refused to defend new travel restrictions targeting seven Muslim-majority nations.

[Ms. Yates expressed uncertainty as to the constitutionality of Trump’s presidential order, after it had been blocked by as many as 5 federal judges.]

 

[It's also interesting to note that the Trump administration had alternatives to firing Ms. Yates - i.e., they could have hired some form of special counsel to argue on behalf of the constitutionality of the presidential order.]

Yates said late on Monday that the Justice Department would not defend in court Trump's directive that put a 120-day hold on allowing refugees into the country, an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria and a 90-day bar on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Yates said she did not believe defending the order would be "consistent with this institution's solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right."

HOURS LATER, SHE WAS FIRED. The White House said Yates "has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States" and portrayed her actions as political.

The White House said that Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, would be acting U.S. attorney general until Sessions is approved. Boente said in an interview with the Washington Post that he would enforce the immigration order.

[Though it remains to be seen if federal prosecutors agree to follow the new Acting AG. Of course, any prosecutor who refuses to follow “management’s” orders risks being fired, as well.]

There have been only a handful of instances in U.S. history of top Justice Department officials publicly breaking with the White House.

Tonight’s incident bear some similarities to 1973, when then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than obey President Richard Nixon’s order to fire a special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. That event became known as the 'Saturday Night Massacre' - a public relations disaster and is seen as a turning point in Nixon's administration.