Meet Sally Yates, the acting US attorney-general who stood up to Trump and was fired for ‘betrayal’

The formerly acting US attorney-general Sally Quillian Yates, a longtime prosecutor from Atlanta, began her tenure as an Obama appointee two years ago by saying that pursuing justice was more important to her than bringing federal cases in court.

“We’re not the Department of Prosecutions or even the Department of Public Safety,” Yates said in May 2015, the week after she was confirmed as deputy attorney general, the second-highest-ranking position in the Justice Department. “We are the Department of Justice.”

On Monday night, only days away from stepping down from her 27-year career in the Justice Department, Yates defied President Donald Trump, ordering federal attorneys not to defend the controversial immigration order issued Friday.

Within hours, Trump fired her. In a news release, the White House said Yates had “betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.” Yates was replaced by Dana Boente, US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who told The Washington Post he would enforce the president’s directive until Trump nominee Senator Jeff Session is confirmed.

Yates, 56, struggled with her decision over the weekend, said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation. By Monday, though, she had concluded that she could not ask her federal attorneys to defend the order, unconvinced of its legality.