Yates: Flynn Was ‘Compromised With Respect To The Russians’

[Stephan Bobb]

Yates: Flynn Was ‘Compromised With Respect To The Russians’

 

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published MAY 8, 2017 3:25 PM

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified Monday that she first warned the White House days after inauguration that ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled members of the Trump administration about his contacts with Russian officials, and that Russia knew about those conversations.

“We felt like it was critical that we get this information to the White House because, in part, the Vice President was unknowingly making false statements to the public, and because we believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,” Yates said in a hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism.

Yates said she and a member of the Justice Department’s national security devision met with White House Counsel Don McGahn in his office on Jan. 26 to let him know that Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials were going on the record with comments about Flynn’s contacts with Russia “that we knew to be untrue.”

She declined to describe how DOJ learned that Flynn was lying to the White House, saying that information was classified.

Yates said she also informed McGahn that the FBI interviewed Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24.

“We were concerned that the American people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what Gen. Flynn had done and additionally that we weren’t the only ones that knew all of this, that the Russians also knew about what Gen. Flynn had done,” Yates testified.

“The Russians also knew that Gen. Flynn had misled the Vice President and others, because in the media accounts it was clear that they were repeating what Gen. Flynn had told them. And that this was a problem because not only did we believe that the Russians knew this but that they likely had proof of this information,” she continued. “And that created a compromise situation, a situation where the national security advisor essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.”