Flynn blackmail risk caused alarm
UNITED STATES: Former acting US Attorney General Sally Yates has told Congress she bluntly warned the Trump White House in January that new national security adviser Michael Flynn ‘‘essentially could be blackmailed’' by the Russians because he apparently had lied to his bosses about his contacts with Moscow’s ambassador in Washington.
Yesterday’s testimony from Yates, an Obama administration holdover fired soon afterwards for other reasons, marked her first public comments about the concerns she raised and filled in basic details about the chain of events that led to Flynn’s ouster in February.
Her testimony, coupled with the revelation hours earlier that President Barack Obama himself had warned Donald Trump against hiring Flynn shortly after the November election, made clear that alarms about Flynn had reached the highest levels of the US government months before.
Yates, appearing before a Senate panel investigating Russian interference in the election, described discussions with Don Mcgahn, the Trump White House counsel, in which she warned that Flynn apparently had misled the administration about his communications with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.
White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, had insisted that Flynn had not discussed Us-imposed sanctions with Kislyak during the presidential transition period. But they asked Flynn to resign after news reports indicated he had lied about the nature of the calls.
``We felt like it was critical that we get this information to the White House, in part because the vice president was unknowingly making false statements to the public and because we believed that General Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,’' Yates said.
``To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians.’'
She said she briefed the Trump White House so they could take ``action they deemed appropriate’' and she believed the Russians had the same information.
Yates’ questioning by a Senate panel investigating Russian interference in the presidential election was just one portion of a politically charged day that began with combative tweets from Trump and continued with disclosures from Obama administration officials about a private Oval Office conversation between Obama and his successor.
Republican senators in the hearing repeatedly pressed Yates on an unrelated matter – her refusal to defend the Trump administration’s travel ban – and whether she was responsible for leaking classified information. She said she was not.
Trump shouldered into the conversation, tweeting at one stage that it was the Obama administration, not he, that had given Flynn ``the highest security clearance’' when he worked at the Pentagon.
Trump made no mention that Flynn had been fired from his high position by the Obama administration in 2014.
Yates said that on January 26 she told Mcgahn there was an alarming discrepancy between how Trump officials, including Pence, were characterising Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak and what intelligence officials knew to be true based on recordings they’d reviewed.
After the hearing yesterday, Trump tweeted: ``The Russiatrump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?’' – AP