Sen. Lankford: 9th Circuit Judges 'Offended' by DOJ

The three Ninth Circuit judges who upheld a Washington federal judge's order for a temporary injunction blocking President Donald Trump's travel ban made their decision because they were "offended by the Justice Department's legal arguments," Sen. James Lankford said Friday.

"Apparently the government attorney said they don't have the right to review this," the Oklahoma Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program, "so they spent lots of time saying yes, we do have the right to review it."

Lankford, though, said the law is clear giving the executive branch the right to make decisions on immigration, especially when dealing with national security.

In their decision, the judges rejected an argument that they did not have authority to question Trump's decisions about people outside the country, and they denied a claim that the order only applied to non-citizens, since green card holders were also affected by the ban.

"There are two steps that the court went through," Lankford said. "One said due process was denied to American citizens and they went back through and said there are some slowdowns and detained, which is not an accurate word there. They know it legally. When they went through that they were talking about American citizens."

Lankford on Friday said the administration should take a close look at the decision and revise the its document rather than pressing it forward in court.

"The administration [should] take a look at this and not go back and press it to court, to go back and clean up the document and to be able to make it clear," Lankford said. "The president has the right to be able to keep the nation safe."

Meanwhile, the United States isn't at this point at a specific risk of attack, but has been at a heightened general risk for months and even years, Lankford said.

"There are real threats of those individuals moving through the refugee process and asylum process in Europe, and [many] of those individuals have carried out terrorist attacks in Europe," Lankford said. "It is not a non-issue and is entirely reasonable for the president to say let's check our process. We'll go back and reopen our borders and do all that but let's make sure we vet correctly before we do it."

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