As the media throws it’s attention to the firing of Comey and more of Trump’s erratic behavior we can’t lose sight of the ongoing Russia investigations. During the the Senate Judiciary Committee Former acting attorney general Sally Yates literally threw the White House under a bus!
Here is an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post by Jennifer Rubin:
Yates: ‘You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians’
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was “compromised” after contacts with Russian officials during testimony on May 8 at the Capitol. (Photo: Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post/Video: Reuters)
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates is testifying this afternoon along with former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism, chaired by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who unlike some GOP colleagues seems interested in getting to the bottom of the Russia scandal in a timely fashion and in full view of the American public.
Word leaked out before she appeared that President Barack Obama, according to multiple Obama administration officials, warned then-President-elect Donald Trump not to hire Michael Flynn as national security adviser. News reports also previewed Yates’s testimony that she had issued an urgent warning to the White House counsel concerning Flynn’s contacts with Russia, which Flynn lied about and would therefore open him to blackmail.
Former CIA and NSA director Michael V. Hayden had chimed in on CNN’s morning show: “If the acting attorney general insists on seeing the White House counsel, that is a tectonic thing in its own right,” Hayden said. “It suggests one: the chaos in the Trump White House, second is the inordinate distrust of the officials from the government they were replacing, and third is going to feed that darker narrative out there with regard to the relationship with the Trump campaign and the Russian Federation.”
With all that build-up, Yates’s testimony might have been anti-climactic. It was not. She described two in-person meetings with Trump White House Counsel Donald McGahn. Both meetings were attended by one of McGahn’s associates and a Justice Department career civil servant from the national security division. In other words, there were plenty of witnesses. Yates testified that she told McGahn on Jan. 26 that Justice was aware that what Flynn was telling Vice President Pence about contacts with the Russians was untrue. She explained the “underlying conduct was problematic in and of itself,” and that it set up the potential for Flynn to be “compromised.” McGahn called her back to the White House on Jan. 27 when he asked questions including what was the concern about one White House official lying to another, whether Flynn might be criminally prosecuted, whether taking action would compromise the investigation and whether the administration could see the underlying data. On Jan. 30, Yates told McGahn the intelligence could in fact be reviewed.
Yates spoke with White House counsel three times about Flynn Play Video1:22
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on May 8. (Photo: Bill O’Leary/Reuters)
The mystery as to why Flynn remained in place for 18 days remains. Did McGahn tell Trump about his meetings with Yates? Did McGahn ever review the underlying intelligence? Who made the decision that keeping Flynn on the job until four days after The Post broke the story that Flynn had lied to Pence? Why did they not believe his ongoing presence in the administration was a problem — or set Pence straight that he was telling untrue things to the American people because Flynn had lied to Pence?
Read the rest of the article here in the Washington Post.
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