Former Obama deputy-turned-acting attorney general during the first days of the first Trump Administration, Sally Yates is the poster child of Justice Department politicization. She famously made herself a martyr by forcing Trump to fire her after she ordered the department not to enforce his travel ban order. Still, when Yates traveled over to Comedy Central on Monday, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart asked her if the Bush-era DOJ was the one to blame for politicization.
Yates insisted that the department is full of high-minded individuals who simply care about justice, leading Stewart to ask:
Did you see in your time when you were there? Did you see the mission begin to change? Did you see it become politicized? While we were there? When you first started, was it much more nuts and bolts? Because I guess that is not the part of the Justice Department, Department of Justice, that I also think about. I also think about after 9/11, you know, John Yoo getting the Department of Justice to justify torture or, you know, is there another hallway, where, like, there’s another Department of Justice, where, like, you guys are working on human trafficking, but they’re there trying to justify other maybe less, what you would say, high-minded things?
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