Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, whose state is one of 16 suing President Donald Trump in retaliation for his national emergency declaration, denounced the move, accusing him of sidestepping Congress to steal money for his border wall.
“The president is breaking the law, and he’s shredding the Constitution,” Tong told CNN Tuesday. “He’s declared a national emergency where there is none.”
Like other opponents of Trump’s emergency, the attorney general pointed to the president’s own acknowledgment that it was unnecessary, noting that “he said he didn’t have to do this and then he went off and played golf.”
The lawsuit in which the state is involved is being led by California and has also been joined by Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Virginia.
It accuses Trump of justifying his emergency with “a manufactured ‘crisis’ of unlawful immigration” in order to “redirect federal dollars appropriated for drug interdiction, military construction and law enforcement initiatives toward building a wall on the United States-Mexico border.”
Doubling down on that argument, Tong said Trump is “perverting the National Emergencies Act,” adding that states are “what stands between this president and his ... attack on our way of life and the Constitution.”