WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump denounced arguments against his immigration order as "disgraceful" Wednesday, a day after three federal appellate judges lobbed inquiries at the lawyers challenging and defending the plan.
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Trump's recent criticism of the judiciary prompted push-back from his nominee for the Supreme Court.
In a speech to law enforcement officials in Washington, Trump said his executive action is clearly legal, and he read aloud the relevant part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which he called "so simple and so beautifully written and so perfectly written." The law lays out the president's capacity to stop legal entry into the U.S. in times of crisis.
The provision states that when a president finds that the entry of foreigners may be detrimental to U.S. interests, the president may "suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
[U.S. immigration: Data visualization of selected immigration statistics, U.S. border map]
"You can suspend, you can put restrictions, you can do whatever you want," Trump said. "It just can't be written any plainer or better."
Trump insisted that the order was within his executive powers, and "a bad high school student would understand this."
"I watched last night, in amazement, and I heard things that I couldn't believe, things that really had nothing to do with what I just read," he said. "And I don't ever want to call a court biased, so I won't call it biased. And we haven't had a decision yet. But courts seem to be so political and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right."
He added, "And that has to do with the security of our country, which is so important."
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The panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday questioned a Justice Department lawyer about what he considered the limits on the president's power and what evidence Trump relied upon in temporarily barring refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
The panel similarly interrogated Washington state's solicitor general, who is challenging the president's directive, over what evidence he had to demonstrate religious discrimination and whether a lower-court judge's freeze on the ban was too broad.
More than 130,000 people turned to a YouTube channel to observe the proceedings, while CNN broadcast the hearing.
The panel said it expects to make a decision on the matter "probably this week," and Judge Michelle Taryn Friedland promised rapid consideration. The ruling could affect tens of thousands of travelers whose visas were revoked by the initial executive order, then restored after U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, an appointee of President George W. Bush, put a nationwide stop to it.
The broad legal question is whether Trump acted within his authority in blocking the entry of people from Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria and Yemen, or whether his order essentially amounts to a discriminatory ban on Muslims. The judges also must weigh the harm the ban imposes and whether it is proper for them to intervene in a national security matter on which the president is viewed as the ultimate authority.
Washington and Minnesota contend that Trump's order is unconstitutional, and hurts their residents and businesses, and that the president "unleashed chaos" by signing it. Taking their side in friend-of-the-court briefs are more than 120 companies, including Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
The Trump administration contention is that the Robart decision threatens national security and second-guesses the president. The judge also exceeded his authority by extending his ruling to include the entire country, according to Justice Department lawyers. Robart said voiding the president's order nationwide was needed for consistency.
Other federal courts, including one in Brooklyn, N.Y., have issued narrower rulings striking down certain parts of Trump's ban. A Boston federal judge's decision last week upholding the ban added to confusion about whether it remained in place as tens of thousands awaited definitive word.
Gorsuch weighs in
Trump's attacks on the judicial branch drew denunciation Wednesday from his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, who told lawmakers that the attacks were "demoralizing" and "disheartening" to the independence of the federal courts.
"He certainly expressed to me that he is disheartened by the demoralizing and abhorrent comments made by President Trump about the judiciary," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters after meeting privately with Gorsuch.
Gorsuch's comments to Blumenthal were confirmed by Ron Bonjean, a member of the judge's "sherpa" team, aides who help him navigate the confirmation process.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the president is expressing his frustration with the process that he believes should be subject to common sense.
"He respects the judiciary," Spicer said. "It's hard for him and for a lot of people to understand how something so clear in the law can be so misinterpreted."
Earlier Wednesday, Trump added to comments decrying the challenge to the order. "If the U.S. does not win this case as it so obviously should, we can never have the security and safety to which we are entitled. Politics!" Trump tweeted.
Later, in his address to hundreds of members of the Major Cities Chiefs Association and Major County Sheriffs' Association, Trump described the legal challenges as "horrible, dangerous and wrong."
"I listened to a bunch of stuff last night on television that was disgraceful," Trump said. "I think it's sad. I think it's a sad day. I think our security is at risk today."
Trump defended the process that yielded the executive order, saying he initially had wanted to wait a week or even a month before issuing the travel ban. But he said he was told by law enforcement officials that doing so would prompt a flood of people, including some with "very evil intentions," to rush into the United States before the restrictions took effect.
"We do things well; we did things right," Trump said. "I suggested a month, then I said, 'Well, what about a week?' They said no, you can't do that because then people are going to pour in before the toughness goes on."
That account appears to be at odds with the one given by several senior officials, who have said they were not fully briefed on the details of Trump's order until the day the president signed it at the Pentagon.
Trump, in his remarks, sought to link his comments about the court battle over his executive order to the law enforcement community in attendance.
"We have to allow you to do your job," he said. "And we have to give you the weapons that you need, and this is a weapon that you need and they're trying to take it away from you."
The president said he was acting solely out of a concern about terrorism, a fear he said had deepened since he took office and gained access to information about the risks facing Americans.
"Believe me. I've learned a lot in the last two weeks, and terrorism is a far greater threat than the people of our country understand," Trump said. "But we're going to take care of it. We're going to win."
Trump later tweeted that there has been a "big increase in traffic into our country from certain areas, while our people are far more vulnerable."
Customs and Border Protection officials have declined multiple requests to detail how many visa holders from the seven designated countries have been allowed into the United States since Robart's decision.
The State Department previously said fewer than 60,000 visas were provisionally revoked after the order was signed and those people would now be allowed to travel to the U.S.
By Tuesday afternoon, 178 refugees had arrived in the U.S, according to the State Department.
Information for this article was contributed by Matt Zapotosky, Robert Barnes, John Wagner and Abby Phillip of The Washington Post; by Vivian Salama, Catherine Lucey and Alicia Caldwell of The Associated Press; by Brian Bennett of Tribune News Service; by David Voreacos, Erik Larson, Jennifer Jacobs, Kartikay Mehrotra, Susannah Nesmith, Greg Stohr and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News; and by Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times.
A Section on 02/09/2017