Yates defends Obama, Biden
Ex-AG: Administration didn’t push Flynn probe
Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates told a Senate panel Wednesday that in the days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden did not target incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn for prosecution in an attempt to undermine the new administration.
Yates, describing a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting to discuss Russian interference in the 2016 election, said she was surprised to learn from Obama that the FBI had intercepted Flynn’s conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which the incoming national security adviser sought to “neuter” recently imposed sanctions on the Kremlin for intervening in the election.
“My memory is clear,” Yates told the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that Obama and Biden made no recommendation on an investigation. Rather, Yates said that Obama urged caution when sharing information with Flynn during the transition to the Trump administration.
“No such thing happened,” Yates said, when later pressed whether administration officials sought to pursue a Flynn investigation. “That meeting was not about an investigation at all. That would have set off alarms for me.”
The Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee called the former Obama administration official as part of its ongoing review of the Russia investigation and the early days of the investigation into Flynn, who would later plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak.
Flynn moved to withdraw that guilty plea in January, claiming the government had breached the plea agreement.
While Flynn awaited sentencing, the Justice Department in May abruptly abandoned the prosecution over the objection of career prosecutors.
The move was challenged by the sentencing judge, who has since asked a federal appeals court to reconsider Justice’s decision, leaving the retired Army lieutenant general’s fate uncertain, nearly three years after he first pleaded guilty.
In her testimony Wednesday, Yates differed with the Justice Department decision and strongly defended the Flynn investigation as legitimate, referring to Flynn’s ultimate decision to plead guilty.
“I was very surprised,” she said of the decision to drop the case. “The circumstances here (in the Flynn case) called out” for the FBI to pursue its investigation.
But Yates also expressed deep concerns about the FBI’s conduct in the early days of the Russia investigation, taking specific issue with then-FBI Director James Comey.
Yates described a tense encounter with Comey following the 2017 Oval Office meeting, saying that she upbraided the FBI director for not informing her of the intercepted Flynn conversations prior to the briefing with the president.
At the time, she said, the FBI was not providing adequate briefings on the agency’s activities.
Asked by Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., whether Comey had gone “rogue,” Yates responded: “You could use that term, yes.”
Yates also said she would not have signed off on the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had she known that the FBI’s wire-tap warrant was deeply flawed.
Last year, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog found that the surveillance warrant was riddled with errors, raising questions about its justification.