The former acting attorney general told a Senate panel she had warned the Trump administration that Michael Flynn had lied about his conversations with a Russian official—but she couldn’t explain why it took another 18 days for him to be fired.
Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, was concerned that Michael Flynn’s false statements about his contacts with the Russian government had exposed him to blackmail, she testified during a Senate hearing on Monday.
During three hours of questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terror, Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discussed Russian interference in the 2016 election. The hearing offered the fullest timeline yet of the events that led to Flynn’s forced resignation on February 13, though it left significant questions unanswered.
“We were concerned that the American people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what General Flynn had done, and also that we weren’t the only ones that knew all of this. The Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done, and they Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled Vice President Pence and others,” Yates said. “This was a problem because not only did we believe that the Russians knew this but that they also likely had proof. This created a compromise situation … where the national security adviser could be blackmailed by the Russians.”