Day 110: Sally Yates Exposed Trump Lies, Senate Republicans
The former acting-attorney general embarrassed numerous GOP senators, while others did that themselves.
Yesterday, former acting attorney general Sally Yates and former director of national intelligence James Clapper testified before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee. In theory, the hearing was supposed to be regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), to his credit, mainly focused on that topic. Most other Republicans did not. Some attempted to attack Hillary Clinton and her aides. Others attempted to figure out why Yates, while acting as AG, instructed the DOJ not to defend Donald Trump’s immigration executive order. Some tried to focus on truthful information being leaked to the press or the idea of unmasking.
In general, the hearing elicited interesting information. For one, Yates met with or spoke to White House counsel on multiple occasions regarding former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. The first meeting, where she expressed serious reservations about Flynn’s truth-telling, as well as his susceptibility to being blackmailed by Russians, was 18 days before Trump accepted Flynn’s resignation.
Additionally, she organized all of the pertinent evidence for the White House to look at prior to her ouster by Trump. She was actually fired on the same day that the White House’s review of the concerning materials was to take place.
Perhaps the most interesting information came early, during Graham’s questioning. The senator asked Clapper if he was aware of any information that indicated direct collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. He said he was not.
When he asked Yates the same question, however, she answered:
And Senator, my answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information. And so, I — I can’t answer that.
Graham tried to understand how Clapper can say there’s no information and Yates can say it’s classified asked Clapper. Graham asked if it was possible that Clapper didn’t have the information to get in his earlier report because the “investigation was not mature enough yet” and Clapper acknowledged the possibility.
Since Clapper and Yates are no longer in their respective positions, neither are in positions to know the current state of the investigation.
What we now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that while Trump got on television or Twitter and blamed Democrats and fake news for the Flynn allegations, the truth is the White House knew for at least 18 days what the real story was and did nothing about it. They knew from the beginning about Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador and the topics that were discussed. The idea that they only learned very late in the process that Flynn lied to Vice President Mike Pence, and that was the reason for Flynn to be removed, was a lie.
Yates explained to White House counsel what the problem was, and they did virtually nothing to oust Flynn until the public pressure ramped up. Furthermore, the FBI may have direct information regarding collusion between Team Trump and the Russians, but the existence of such of information is classified.
Later, the two senators from Texas, Republicans Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, got absolutely dunked on by Yates while trying to question her about matters not pertinent to the Trump/Flynn/Russia story.
Cornyn basically asked Yates why she didn’t just blindly follow the president’s orders since he’s the president. Yates was ready.
Yates was referring to this exchange between herself and then-senator, and (ironically) now-attorney general Jeff Sessions during her deputy attorney general confirmation hearing.
In 2015, Republicans were concerned that Yates — a career DOJ lawyer who worked under Republicans and Democrats alike — would just kowtow to the president — at the time, Obama — no matter what the instruction was from the executive office. When Yates informed Sessions that her obligation was to follow the law and give independent legal advice to the president, no matter how difficult that conversation may be, Republicans were happy with that. (She was confirmed by a GOP-controlled Senate 84–12.)
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Republicans are enraged that she refused to blindly follow the president, despite the fact that 1) the administration ended up pulling back that executive order for many of the reasons she expressed reservations about and 2) federal courts have largely agreed with her on Trump’s subsequent, similar executive order.
Ted Cruz was next to learn that Yates is a far better legal mind that he is.
This is about as big of a legal burn that someone can give under the circumstances: ‘I hear you, I understand you, but my more recent statute and the Constitution both override your statute.’
Later in the hearing, John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) unintelligently pressed Clapper if he ever leaked “classified or unclassified” information to the press. Clapper, as the room laughed at Kennedy, answered that “unclassified is not leaking.”
While the subcommittee had a chance to dive into issues that include collusion with a foreign government — crimes that would be treasonous — most Republicans spent their time doing Trump’s bidding. Though they tried to sidetrack the proceedings to focus on largely irrelevant things, they humiliated themselves in the process.
110 days in, 1352 to go
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