"The President’s order is an unconstitutional embarrassment and I applaud you for taking a principled stand against defending it," one DOJ attorney wrote to Yates after Yates said she wouldn't enforce Trump's first travel ban.

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Internal Justice Department emails released on Tuesday by a conservative watchdog group shed new light on the support that former acting attorney general Sally Yates got from within the department after she announced that she wouldn't defend President Donald Trump's first travel ban in January. Judicial Watch, the group that obtained the messages through a Freedom of Information Act request, is pointing to the cache as proof of anti-Trump bias at the Justice Department — as well as within the special counsel's office investigating Russian influence in the 2016 election. One of those emails to Yates came from Andrew Weissmann, who at the time was the head of the Justice Department's criminal fraud section and is now a member of special counsel Robert Mueller's team.

Judicial Watch / Via judicialwatch.org

"I am so proud" was the subject line on Weissmann's email to Yates, sent at 9:50 p.m. on Jan. 30. The body of the email read: "And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects, Andrew Weissmann." A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment on behalf of the office as well as Weissmann. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement that Weissmann's email was "astonishing and disturbing." "How much more evidence do we need that the Mueller operation has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans?" Fitton said. "Shut it down." Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics expert at Washington University School of Law, told BuzzFeed News that she didn't think that Weissmann's email presented a conflict of interest with his work on the special counsel's team. Weissmann expressing admiration for Yates was not necessarily evidence of bias, Clark said. "Weissmann wasn't taking a swipe at Trump," Clark said. Yates was fired by Trump on Jan. 30 after she announced to Justice Department officials via a one-page memo that she was not convinced that the travel ban executive order that Trump signed on Jan. 27 was lawful. The emails released by Judicial Watch show that messages of support came into her inbox from across the Justice Department throughout the evening. Some of the emails came from US attorneys, while others came from career officials and prosecutors across the country. Judicial Watch highlighted several of those emails, including one from a DOJ appellate attorney, Jeffrey Clair, who wrote, "Thank you AG Yates. I’ve been in civil/appellate for 30 years and have never seen an administration with such contempt for democratic values and the rule of law. The President’s order is an unconstitutional embarrassment and I applaud you for taking a principled stand against defending it."

Judicial Watch / Via judicialwatch.org