Sally Yates was a United States Attorney and Deputy Attorney General under former President Barack Obama and began her position as acting Attorney General on January 20, 2017, at the start of the new administration.

On January 30, 2017, Yates was dismissed from her position because she had “betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” according to a statement from the Trump administration.

This order, as mentioned in the statement, was Executive Order 13769, which was created with the purpose of banning entry from citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen for a period of 90 days. Executive Order 13769 is often referred to as a muslim ban, due to the demographics of these countries, and the administration’s promise to “prioritize Christian refugees” in these areas.

Yates resistance to defending this order came from her lack of assurance in its legality. The president’s dismissal of her shows that he believes the job of the Attorney General is to blindly support his will without regard for the law, which he found in Jeff Sessions.

Jeff Sessions, the recently confirmed Attorney General, was a United States senator from Alabama and an early supporter of the Trump campaign for President. Sessions’ road to confirmation was plagued with concerns about his questionable voting history — a history that earned him a zero percent rating from groups like the Human Rights Campaign. Sessions’ socially conservative views line up with those of Mike Pence and more frighteningly, Steve Bannon, which is the prime reason he was chosen for the Attorney General position.

The flaw in Trump’s selection for Attorney General does not merely come from Sessions’ agreement with his policies, which is expected by any administration for their Attorney General pick. The flaw lies in Trump’s assumption that the role of the Attorney General is the whole-hearted defense of him, over the laws previously set in place. Trump’s firing of Yates confirms this by displaying his quickness to terminate all who disagree with him while also showing how important legality will be in the future of this administration. Representative John Conyers, a U.S. Representative from Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, referred to this future by stating, “If dedicated government officials deem [Trump's] directives to be unlawful and unconstitutional, he will simply fire them as if government is a reality show.”

Conyers articulates the fear harboring in many Americans that manifested following the firing of Yates.

Towards the last few weeks of the Nixon era, the former president became scared and grew aware that his days were numbered. As the special prosecutor on the case, Archibald Cox, began to close in on the truth surrounding the Watergate “break-ins,” Nixon ordered his Attorney General Eliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned from the position, followed by his Deputy Attorney General, William Doyle Ruckelshaus, who was also coaxed by Nixon to fire the prosecutor. If it were not for Richardson and Ruckelshaus’ weighing justice over the future for their political careers, it is possible that much of the Watergate scandal may have not come to light and definitely not in that time frame.

Demonstrated here is a situation where the Attorney General defended justice, no matter the cost to their administration, which is the subsequent purpose of the position. In Trump’s idea of an Attorney General, Richardson would have immediately fired Cox, further covering up Nixon’s faults. Trump’s idea of an Attorney General takes justice with a grain of salt and favors the only person that matters: him.