Former DOJ official denies anti-Trump politics in Obama’s inquiry into Flynn

A key player in the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn testified that President Barack Obama and his deputies focused solely on national security, not anti-Trump politics, in discussing what to do about Flynn’s dealings with Russia’s ambassador.

“Something like that would have set off alarms for me,” Sally Yates, who was the second-in-command at the Justice Department at the time of the conversation, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “No such thing happened. The president was focused entirely on the national security implications of sharing sensitive intelligence information with General Flynn during the transitional process that was obviously already underway at the White House.”

President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress say a White House meeting on Jan. 5, 2017, was part of a plot by Obama’s administration and rogue forces in the FBI to spy on his campaign and then conduct a “witch hunt” into allegations of collaborating with campaign interference by Russia.

Yates participated in the meeting. Under questions from Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Yates said then-FBI Director James Comey may have gone “rogue,” in Graham’s phrasing, by acting without consulting her to schedule an FBI interview with Flynn about his conversations with Sergei Kislyak, who was the Russian ambassador.

“You could use that term,” said Yates, who served briefly as acting attorney general. She also agreed with Graham’s condemnation of improprieties in the FBI’s pursuit of court approval for surveillance of Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser. Under questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s top Democrat, Yates said Flynn was potentially compromised because the Russians knew he lied in denying he’d discussed American sanctions with Kislyak.

“We had Gen. Flynn engaging in discussions with the Russian ambassador that were essentially neutering the American sanctions, and that is a very curious thing to be doing particularly when the Russians had been acting to benefit President Trump,” Yates said.