GOP leader unsure on legality of Trump’s emergency declaration

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he has yet to determine whether President Trump’s emergency declaration to build border barriers is legal.

Asked for his legal opinion after meeting with a Department of Justice lawyer at a Tuesday luncheon of the GOP conference, McConnell said, “I haven’t reached a total conclusion.”

{mosads}McConnell said while he graduated from law school, he’s not an expert on constitutional questions of separations of power.

“I wouldn’t go, to me, for a simple will,” he said, while noting, “I did go to law school.”

“We had real serious lawyers in there discussing that very issue,” he said, summarizing the lunchtime discussion with Vice President Pence and the senior lawyer from Justice.

“We had a very fulsome discussion of this issue in the conference at noon today with the vice president,” McConnell added.

He described his GOP colleagues as “extremely interested” in the topic.

“We really do think there’s a crisis at the border,” he added.

Three Republican senators — Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) — say they will support a Democratic-sponsored resolution of disapproval on the emergency declaration.

McConnell said it will come up for a vote on the Senate floor before the recess scheduled for mid-March.