Tag Archives: sally yates

Sally Yates says she warned White House that Flynn was a blackmail risk

By Tom LoBianco and Stephen Collinson
Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said Monday that she alerted the White House earlier this year that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn could be “essentially blackmailed by the Russians.”
“We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,” Yates told a Senate judiciary subcommittee, in a high-profile hearing on Russian meddling into the US election.
Yates told the panel that she had a meeting with White House Counsel Donald McGahn on January 26 to tell him that she had information that statements by Vice President Mike Pence, based on his conversations with Flynn, were false. She was joined in the meeting by a senior career official in the Justice Department.
“We weren’t the only ones that knew all of this, that the Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done and the Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others,” Yates said, relating the contents of her conversation with McGahn.
Yates was speaking at a hearing led by Sen. Lindsey Graham, who opened the hearing with an implicit rebuke of the President and his alternative explanations for the interference in the election.
The South Carolina Republican said the hacking was not the work of “some 400-pound guy sitting on a bed or any other country,” a reference to a comment Trump has previously made on the matter.
Flynn lawyer Robert Kelner said Monday after the hearing’s conclusion that he is declining comment on Yates’ testimony.
Trump fired Flynn, a retired general, for failing to disclose discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about US sanctions against the Kremlin and for not telling the truth about them to Vice President Mike Pence. Yates did not say specifically that her concerns about Flynn’s behavior was related to these calls, but she appeared to be implying that was the case.
In her opening statement, Yates said that she planned to be as “fulsome and comprehensive as possible” within ethical and legal boundaries.
Yates also warned in her opening testimony that there were some issues she could not address publicly because they involved classified information. Similarly, she said that as a former official she was not authorized to discuss Department of Justice or other executive branch deliberations. It was not immediately clear how those constraints would affect her testimony on the Flynn question. Neither Flynn nor Trump were directly referenced in her opening statement.
“The efforts by a foreign adversary to interfere and undermine our democratic processes — and those of our allies — pose a serious threat to all Americans,” Yates said.
Graham asked Yates whether she had any information about whether there was collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia.
“My answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information,” Yates said.
At one point in the hearing Graham asked both Clapper and Yates how information about Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador, that eventually led to his sacking, made it into the newspapers. Trump asked a similar question earlier on Twitter. Both former official said they did not know how that happened.
Trump went on the offensive on Twitter Monday morning, hours before the hearing began, blaming the Obama administration for Flynn’s security clearance and asking the committee to question Yates over leaking classified information to the media.
“General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that,” Trump wrote, adding later, “Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Council.”
A White House official told CNN that the administration plans to rebut Yates by employing two strategies: Calling into question her objectivity by arguing she is a partisan Democrat and questioning the timeline of events she is expected to present.
The Senate judiciary committee’s crime and terrorism subcommittee also heard from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who spoke in advance of Yates. He testified that he did not know about the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the election and whether there were any links to the Trump campaign until its existence was announced in a congressional hearing by FBI Director James Comey in March.
“During my tenure as DNI, it was my practice to defer to the FBI director — both (former FBI) Director (Robert) Mueller and Director Comey — on whether, when, and to what extent they would inform me about such investigations,” Clapper said.
Trump hailed Clapper’s comments and said they backed his claim that there was no evidence to support allegations of collusion between his campaign and the Russian government.
“Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is “no evidence” of collusion w/ Russia and Trump,” Trump said in the first of a series of tweets after the hearing.
Likewise, a White House official drew attention to Clapper’s comments and added: “Remember, the bottom line w/ the Russia stuff is the question of collusion during the campaign.”
Clapper issued a clarion call for vigilance over Russian election interference before it further eroded US democracy.
“They must be congratulating themselves for having exceeded their wildest expectations,” he said. “They are now emboldened to continue such activities in the future, both here and around the world, and to do so even more intensely.”
Graham, the leader of Monday’s hearing, also invited former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, to testify with Yates and Clapper, but she rejected the invitation through her lawyer, noting the last-minute timing of the invitation. A source familiar with Rice’s discussions told CNN that when Graham invited her, Rice believed it was a bipartisan overture and was prepared to accept. However, ranking Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse indicated to her that the invitation was made without his agreement, as he believed her presence was not relevant to the topic of the hearing, according to the source.
Of the four former Trump campaign aides at the center of the Capitol Hill’s Russia probes — including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former foreign policy adviser Carter Page and former campaign adviser Roger Stone — Flynn has generated the most heat following a steady stream of revelations.
Investigators on the House oversight committee raised the possibility last month that Flynn may have broken the law by not disclosing payments from RT-TV, widely considered by US officials to be a propaganda arm of the Russian government, on his 2016 national security clearance form. Flynn’s lawyer at the time argued that Flynn had been open about his speech to RT-TV, including briefing the Defense Intelligence Agency on his trip.
Yates’ appearance itself had been fraught with drama ever since House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes’ delayed her House hearing at the last minute, as part of a chaotic three-week stretch that saw the House Russia investigation almost fall apart and Nunes become the subject of a House ethics probe.
The Washington Post reported at the time that the White House had blocked Yates by asserting executive privilege, which allows the President to stop a former aide from testifying. White House press secretary Sean Spicer vehemently denied the reports at the time and said that the White House actively supports Yates’ testifying in public.
A White House official said last week that the administration still wants Yates to testify in public and reaffirmed Spicer’s comments. Graham and Whitehouse also said they heard of no effort to stop her from coming before them.
Still, Democrats on the House Russia investigation are anxiously watching Monday’s hearing: First, to see if Yates shows up and, second, to see how much she reveals publicly.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Former AG Sally Yates was anti-immigration ban

[van id=”politics/2017/01/30/trump-travel-ban-acting-atty-general-perez-tsr-sot.cnn”]

Attorney General Sally Yates had instructed the Justice Department not to defend President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees. CNN’s Evan Perez reports.
By Evan Perez and Jeremy Diamond, CNN
President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday night for “refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” the White House said.
“(Yates) has betrayed the Department of Justice,” the White House statement said.
Dana Boente, US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the White House said, and was sworn in at 9 p.m. ET, per an administration official. A few hours later, Boente issued a statement rescinding Yates’ order, instructing DOJ lawyers to “defend the lawful orders of our President.”
Trump didn’t call Yates to dismiss her, she was informed by hand-delivered letter, according to a different administration official.
The dramatic move came soon after CNN reported Yates told Justice Department lawyers not to make legal arguments defending Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees.
The move set up a clash between the White House and Yates, who was appointed by President Barack Obama and was set to serve until Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, if confirmed.
“My responsibility is to ensure that the position of the Department of Justice is not only legally defensible, but is informed by our best view of what the law is after consideration of all the facts,” she said in a letter. “In addition, I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right.”
Trump’s executive order, signed Friday, bars citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for the next 90 days, suspends the admission of all refugees for 120 days and indefinitely suspends the Syrian refugee program. Yates’ decision came amid a flood of protests against the executive order nationwide and after four federal judges ruled against Trump’s order, staying its impact on people who were detained at US airports over the weekend.
Trump tweeted his response shortly after the news broke, saying Democrats have stymied Sessions’ confirmation, enabling Yates.
“The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons. They have nothing going but to obstruct. Now have an Obama A.G.,” he said.
“At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful,” Yates wrote.
Yates’ decision was always likely to be extremely short-lived as Sessions is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
White House policy director Stephen Miller, who helped craft the executive order, called Yates’ decision “a further demonstration of how politicized our legal system has become.”
“It’s sad that our politics have become so politicized, that you have people refusing to enforce our laws,” Miller said Monday night on MSNBC.
Miller also defended the executive order’s legality, insisting that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the President “the ability to exclude any class of would-be visitors or immigrants to our country based on our national security interests.”
But the decision didn’t face the same criticism from Rep. Pete Sessions, a top House Republican, who said Yates’ decision was likely similar “to an evaluation that we made.”
“And that was it did not appear to be specific in nature,” Sessions said referring to the executive order. “So it may be a matter of clarity it may be a matter of illegality to him, it may be a matter of several things. It did not look as complete and succinct as what I think I would’ve wanted.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, praised Yates for standing up “on principle.”
“In all my years as a member of Congress, which now is 21, I’ve met so many very principled people who truly believe in the Constitution and doing what is right,” Cumming said. “There comes a time when people, no matter who may be their boss, they stand upon their principles, so at the end of the day they can look them selves in the mirror and say ‘I synchronized my conduct with my conscience.’ And Yates is such a person.”
Currently, there are cases filed in at least five states including Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, Washington and California that are challenging Trump’s order.
The decision effectively grounds the executive order for the next few days until Sessions is sworn in.
“This will be moot. Then we will very much see the Trump Justice Department led by Jeff Sessions defend this executive order pretty vigorously. And then it will be up to the courts,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN contributor and law professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN’s Erin Burnett Monday the Justice Department decision reflects poorly on the Trump administration.
“When you do something as important as this, it can’t be a Twitter-type of activity,” Schumer said. “This has to be thoroughly vetted … and it’s a very bad omen for this presidency.”
Activists who have led the fight against Trump’s immigration ban lauded Yates’ action Monday night.
“We took to the courtroom, people took to the streets and now principled federal officials are drawing a hardline on this shameful and unconstitutional act by President Trump. This is what we rely on the Department of Justice for, to uphold the rule of law no matter how the political wind is blowing,” said Karen Tumlin, the National Immigration Law Center’s legal director.
Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued against the immigration ban in court in New York, praised Yates’ decision and called on the next attorney general to “continue with that policy.”
“This ban will do irreparable damage to real people and to American values,” he said.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.