Former
Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates said on Monday she warned the White
House in January that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had been
compromised and could have been vulnerable to blackmail by Russia.
Yates
testified at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing that focused primarily on
Flynn, and did not shed much light on other aspects of investigations of
allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election and whether there was
collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Moscow.
Yates
repeatedly declined to discuss details of the investigation in a public forum.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who also testified,
said he stood by past assertions that he had not seen evidence of such collusion
but also declined to comment on classified matters.
Yates
briefly led the U.S. Justice Department until Trump fired her on Jan. 30 for
declining to defend his travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries. She told
White House counsel Don McGahn on Jan. 26, less than a week into Trump's
presidency, that Flynn had not been telling the truth about his contacts with
Russia's ambassador to Washington.
Making her
first public statements about the issue, Yates said she feared Moscow could try
to blackmail Flynn because it also knew he had not been truthful about
conversations he had with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on
Russia.
Flynn, a
retired general once seen as a potential Trump vice president, has emerged as a
central figure in the Russian probes. Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling
in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion
with Russia.
Yates told
the hearing she had been concerned that "the national security adviser
essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians."
"Logic
would tell you that you don't want the national security adviser to be in a
position where the Russians have leverage over him," she said.
Trump, who
continued to praise Flynn, waited 18 days after Yates' warning before Flynn's
forced resignation for failing to disclose the content of his talks with
Kislyak and then misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.
Several
Democratic senators questioned Trump's delay. Yates said that in her meetings,
McGahn "demonstrated that he understood this was serious. .. If nothing
was done, certainly that would be concerning."
During that
section of the hearing, Clapper described as accurate a report in the Guardian
newspaper that British intelligence officials became aware in late 2015 about
suspicious interactions between Trump advisers and Russian agents, and that the
information was passed on to U.S. intelligence agencies.
"Yes,
it is (accurate), and it's also quite sensitive," Clapper said.
Yates was a
holdover from the administration of President Barack Obama. Obama had warned
Trump, then president-elect, not to give the post of national security adviser
in his administration to Flynn just after the Republican's surprise victory in
the Nov. 8 election, a former Obama aide said.
The warning,
first reported by NBC News, came up during a discussion of White House
personnel.
White House
spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Obama had communicated concerns about
Flynn. It "shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, given that General
Flynn had worked for President Obama, was an outspoken critic of President
Obama's shortcomings," Spicer said.
Obama pushed
Flynn out in 2014 from his job as director of the military's Defense
Intelligence Agency, or DIA.
CYBER
ATTACKS
Congressional
committees began investigating after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered hacking of Democratic political groups
to try to sway the election toward Trump.
The main
investigations are being conducted by congressional Intelligence Committees,
although Democrats have clamored for a special prosecutor or independent
committee. They argue that congressional committees are too partisan to conduct
credible probes.
After
Monday's hearing, Trump took to Twitter to bash the media and deny any
collusion. "Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake
media already knows- there is 'no evidence' of collusion w/ Russia and
Trump," he said.
And in
another tweet, the president seemed to denounce the hearings. "The
Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded
charade end?" he asked.
FBI Director
James Comey testified in the House on March 20 that the agency was
investigating potential links between Trump associates and Moscow's attempts to
tilt the election.
Trump had
also used Twitter before the hearing to insinuate that Yates had leaked
information on Flynn to the media. Yates and Clapper both swore under oath that
they had never leaked classified information.
Questioning
on Monday often broke along party lines.
Some
Republicans veered away from Russia to focus on issues such as whether the
Obama administration had improperly revealed the names of Trump associates
contained in surveillance records.
Senator John
Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, was one of a handful who grilled
Yates about her objections to Trump’s travel ban.
Trump fired
Yates after she defied the White House on the travel ban, a policy that Trump
said would help protect Americans from Islamist militants.
*REUTERS*
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