Washington State AG pushes to uncover 'what truly motivated' Trump's Muslim ban ... DOJ says hold on

Washington state's Attorney General Bob Ferguson has big plans and lots of questions for the Trump regime should it decide to move forward and appeal last week's ruling from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit continuing the bar on enforcement of the Muslim ban. The rulings so far have not been on the merits of either side's arguments, but the three judges were leaning that way, and "cited a previous case establishing that 'circumstantial evidence of intent, including … statements by decisionmakers, may be considered in evaluating whether a governmental action was motivated by a discriminatory purpose.'"

Washington state’s attorney general has promised to uncover “what truly motivated” President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, an approach that could prompt a rare public examination of how a U.S. president makes national security decisions. [...]

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson signaled on Sunday that he will move aggressively to obtain written documents and emails authored by administration officials that might contain evidence the order was unconstitutionally biased against Muslims or Islam. He said he would also move to depose administration officials.

Legal scholars say this could move the court into uncharted waters.

"The idea of looking at motive has never really been applied to the president," said John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. 

(Yes, that's the same John Yoo who provided the official legal counsel to George W. Bush and believes that if the president wants to torture a person by having them witness their child's testicles being crushed, that's a-okay. It just "depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that”—and presumably who is determining what motive the president has: his internal legal counsel that provides a rubber stamp, or the courts.)

U.S. courts have actually sometimes allowed intent behind laws to be examined when it comes to questions of racial or religious discrimination. The new part would be examining that at the executive level because no president before has issued such a flawed order, skating such a thin line of religious discrimination.