The removal of a webpage has put President Donald Trump in a lose-lose situation as appeals courts weigh whether to use his campaign statements in deciding if opponents are likely to show his second travel ban executive order illegally targets Muslims.

An online statement outlining then-candidate Trump's pledge to halt Muslim immigration, which had remained on his continually updated campaign website since Dec. 7, 2015, disappeared just before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit's hearing Monday on Trump's revised travel ban. The removal could come up during a Ninth Circuit hearing set for next week.

The question of why the webpage came down gets at the heart of the travel ban litigation, which has played out in courts across the country: whether judges can consider what Trump said or did on the campaign trail when evaluating his presidential actions. And if they can, is the president always tainted by those statements, even if he removes them from websites or rescinds them?