Flynn ‘ was compromised,’ former official testifies
WASHINGTON — Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified Monday that she warned White House lawyers at least twice in January that President Donald Trump’s national security adviser at the time, Michael Flynn, “could be blackmailed” by Moscow, may have violated criminal statutes and had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his dealings with Russian officials.
“We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised,” Yates, a career federal prosecutor, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
“You don’t want the Russians to have leverage over the national security adviser," she said.
Flynn, a retired Army three-star general, was forced to resign as Trump’s top national security aide 18 days after Yates, on Jan. 26, first alerted the White House, but only after news stories revealed the existence of a transcript of Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The White House asked Flynn to resign after news reports indicated he had lied about the nature of the calls.
At issue is whether Flynn improperly indicated to Kislyak that the Trump administration would ease or reverse economic sanctions that President Barack Obama had imposed on Moscow in retaliation for Russian interference in the U.S. presidential campaign. Flynn denied doing so.
Yates’ testimony adds to Flynn’s potential legal problems, outlining concerns by the Justice Department that Flynn’s conversations with the Russian diplomat during the transition may have violated the law. He has not been charged with a crime.
It also highlighted the mounting pressure the White House faces from three congressional investigations into Russia’s interference in the election. In March, the FBI confirmed it is conducting a separate counterintelligence investigation into whether any of Trump’s current or former aides improperly coordinated with Russian intelligence.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who also testified Monday, warned that Russia’s efforts to influence the election posed a threat to democracy, and that the hacking and leaking of Democratic Party emails were a worrying taste of the future.
“I believe they are emboldened to now continue such activities, both here and around the world,” Clapper said. “And I believe they will continue to do so.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who headed the hearing, said it is vital to get to the bottom of Moscow’s role in the election.
“The Democratic Party of 2016 were the victims this time. It could be the Republican Party in the future,” Graham said. “We’re all in the same boat.”
Yates was named deputy attorney general by Obama in 2015. She served as acting attorney general for 10 days after Trump was inaugurated.
Yates testified that she and a senior official in the national security division at the Justice Department met with Donald McGahn, the top White House lawyer, on Jan. 26 and 27 in the White House to discuss statements by Flynn and others “that we knew not to be the truth.”
Yates said that after FBI agents interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, she believed 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 American public. And we believed Gen. Flynn was compromised with regard to the Russians.”
Yates refused to go into detail about Flynn’s communications with the Russians. She also denied leaking any classified information about the case to the news media.
She said that McGahn
asked whether Flynn should be fired and that she replied it was up to the White House.
He also asked her whether Flynn might be subject to criminal prosecution, Yates recalled. She told him that the “underlying conduct,” referring to Flynn’s conversations with Kisylak, “was problematic.”
Trump fired Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, on Jan. 30 after she announced that Justice would not go to court to defend an executive order seeking to bar travel from seven mostly Muslim countries.
Yates said she had concluded that the executive order was unlawful and that it was her duty to say so. Since then, three federal courts have blocked the order, and a similar subsequent order, as unlawful.
The hearing opened hours after it emerged that Obama had warned then-Presidentelect Trump two days after the election in November against picking Flynn as his national security adviser. Obama delivered the warning when he met Trump for 90 minutes in the Oval Office, according to a former senior Obama official.
Obama told Trump he should “think twice” about hiring Flynn after they got into a conversation about personnel, the official said.
Ahead of the Senate hearing, Trump sought to distance himself from Flynn, citing the decision by the
Defense Intelligence Agency to extend Flynn’s security clearance after he retired in 2014.
“General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration — but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that,” he tweeted Monday morning.
Other officials said Flynn’s clearance as a retired general was lower than he subsequently needed to be national security adviser, and Trump made no mention of the fact that Flynn had been fired from his high position by the Obama administration in 2014.