Administration allegedly tried to limit testimony
White House says it did not interfere with plans to testify.
A lawyer for WASHINGTON — former deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in let- ters last week that the Trump administration was trying to limit her testimony at con- gressional hearings focused on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The House intelligence com-
mittee chairman later canceled the meeting.
In the letters, attorney David O’Neil said he understood the Justice Department was invoking “further constraints” on testimony Yates could provide at a committee hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday. He said the department’s posi- tion was that all actions she took as deputy attorney general were “client confi- dences” that could not be disclosed without written approval.
“We believe that the Department’s position in this regard is overbroad, incorrect, and inconsistent with the Department’s histor- ical approach to the congressional testimony of current and former senior officials,” O’Neil wrote in a March 23 letter to Justice Department official Samuel Ramer.
The White House said Tuesday it did not interfere with Yates’ plans to testify.
have no problem with her testifying, plain and simple,” White House spokes- man Sean Spicer said.
Yates’ lawyer said she still intended to testify and would not disclose any classified information. A requirement that she not discuss even non-classified material “is particularly untenable given that multiple senior administration officials have publicly described the same events,” O’Neil said.
House committee chair- man Devin Nunes announced he was canceling the meeting on March 24, days after the committee’s first hear-
ing in which FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the bureau was investigating ties between associates of President Donald Trump and Russia.
Cancelling the hearing was one of several moves that have sparked outrage from Democrats on the commit- tee. The typically biparti- san panel has been torn by disputes over Nunes’ ties to Trump’s campaign and ques- tions about whether he can lead a probe independent of White House influence.
On Tuesday, Nunes rebuffed calls to step aside from the investigation.
“It’s the same thing as always around this place — a lot of politics, people get heated, but I’m not going to involve myself with that,” he said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan continued to express confi- dence in Nunes, saying there was no need for the chairman to resign.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Sen- ate intelligence committee — which is also investigating the Russia ties — said White House meddling in Congress’ Russia investigations is not helping to “remove the cloud that increasingly is getting darker
over the administration.” The White House called a Washington Post story on the letters from Yates’ attorney “entirely false” and said
the administration had not taken any steps to block Yates from testifying in the hear- ing. O’Neil declined to comment Tuesday and a Justice Department spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment.
Yates, who was fired in January as acting attorney general after she refused to defend the Trump administration ban on travel to the U.S. by residents of some predominantly Islamic countries, was expected to be questioned about her role in the firing of Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Yates alerted
the White House in January that Flynn had misled other administration officials about whether he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Rus- sia in a December phone call with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn was not ousted from the White House until the discrepancies were made public.
The hearing would have been another public airing of the infighting within the
committee. Democrats on Monday called on Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation after he acknowledged he went to the White House complex to review intelligence reports and meet a secret source.
Shortly afterward, Nunes announced that Trump associates’ communications had been were caught up in “incidental” surveillance, a revelation President Trump used to defend his unproven claim that President Barack Obama tapped the phones at Trump Tower.