Sally Quillian Yates, fired last week as acting U.S. attorney general after she defied President Donald Trump, is being commended for a career of "unyielding commitment to justice and public service" in a resolution filed by Democrats in the Georgia Senate.
GOP leaders in the chamber have assigned Senate Resolution 167 to the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s a sign that they may sit on it, since they could have allowed the resolution to be passed by consent -- something that happens with most types of honoring resolutions.
Sponsored by state Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, SR 167 makes no mention of the abrupt dismissal of Yates who, acting as the nation's top law enforcement officer, instructed the Justice Department not to defend Trump's executive order banning refugees from entry into the United States.
Instead, it lauds a career that started in Atlanta as Yates made a name for herself as a prosecutor in the early 1990s as she shook up City Hall during an airport corruption and bribery scandal. She then rose through the ranks of the U.S. Attorney's Office here, earning bipartisan praise over 25 years as a federal prosecutor in Atlanta before President Barack Obama nominated her to be deputy U.S. attorney general in January 2015
Yates, 56, grew up in Atlanta and received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Georgia. Her father Kelley Quillian, served as a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals until he retired in 1985.
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