A defiant United States President Donald Trump on Friday denounced as "disgraceful" an appellate court's decision blocking his controversial ban on refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Referring to a portion of an article written on the national security blog Lawfare, which highlights a statute that the author says the judges failed to cite, Trump tweeted: "LAWFARE: 'Remarkably, in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother even to cite this (the) statute.' A disgraceful decision!"
Lawfare is a legal blog that covers the intersection of national security and the legal world. Its website reads that it is published in cooperation with the Brookings Institution, a well-known Washington think tank, Politico reported.
The post Trump referred to breaks down the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling upholding a stay on the president’s executive order temporarily banning individuals from certain majority-Muslim nations from entering the US.
Benjamin Wittes, who wrote the article and is the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, swiftly responded to Trump's tweet, saying he supports the court's decision and urged the public to read his full blog post.
"You decide whether the POTUS is quoting me in context. Here's the article. For the record, I support the decision," Wittes tweeted, including a link to his article.
The White House has vowed to continue to fight for the orders and has expressed confidence that they will ultimately be upheld in court, but today's ruling keeps them out of effect, at least for the time being.
Trump, after court decision, took to Twitter and said the court ruling was a "political decision" and he looked forward to pursuing a legal challenge.
A three-judge panel ruled earlier in the day not to grant a stay that would have reinstated Trump’s controversial immigration order to temporarily halt immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa and temporarily shut down the refugee programme.
"We hold that the Government has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, nor has it shown that failure to enter a stay would cause irreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergency motion for a stay," the panel, from the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, wrote in the decision.
