DUBAI: President Donald Trump’s team has deleted his statement calling for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States from his campaign website on Monday.
The statement was originally posted on Dec. 7, 2015 and the deletion appears to have come after tense exchanges between judges and lawyers over Trump’s travel ban, issued in March.
Lawyers began questioning Trump’s statement during an appeals court hearing Monday regarding an executive order which attempted to halt new visas being issued to immigrants from six-Muslim majority countries.
Minutes before the statement was deleted, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was grilled about it by a journalist during a briefing.
Spicer told reporters he was “not aware” of the contents of the campaign website.
The website link to the statement still exists, however, the text has been removed.
Multiple federal judges have blocked two executive orders aimed at pausing immigration from some majority-Muslim countries. A judge in Hawaii previously used the statement to back the claim that Trump intended to ban Muslims from entering the US and successfully blocked the enforcement of the first anti-immigration order.