- Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is testifying before a Senate subcommittee Monday
- President Donald Trump tweeted about the hearing hours before it started
begin quote from:
Yates: I warned of Russia blackmail risk
Clapper: I did make unmasking request
Sally Yates says she warned White House that Flynn was a blackmail risk
Story highlights
(CNN)Former
acting Attorney General Sally Yates said Monday that she alerted the
White House earlier this year that former Trump national security
adviser Michael Flynn could be "essentially blackmailed by the
Russians."
"We believed that
Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians," Yates told a
Senate judiciary subcommittee, in a high-profile hearing on Russian
meddling into the US election.
Yates
told the panel that she had a meeting with White House Counsel Donald
McGahn on January 26 to tell him that she had information that
statements by Vice President Mike Pence, based on his conversations with
Flynn, were false. She was joined in the meeting by a senior career
official in the Justice Department.
"We
weren't the only ones that knew all of this, that the Russians also
knew about what General Flynn had done and the Russians also knew that
General Flynn had misled the vice president and others," Yates said,
relating the contents of her conversation with McGahn.
Yates
was speaking at a hearing led by Sen. Lindsey Graham, who opened the
hearing with an implicit rebuke of the President and his alternative
explanations for the interference in the election.
The
South Carolina Republican said the hacking was not the work of "some
400-pound guy sitting on a bed or any other country," a reference to a
comment Trump has previously made on the matter.
Trump
fired Flynn, a retired general, for failing to disclose discussions
with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about US sanctions against the
Kremlin and for not telling the truth about them to Vice President Mike
Pence. Yates did not say specifically that her concerns about Flynn's
behavior was related to these calls, but she appeared to be implying
that was the case.
In her opening
statement, Yates said that she planned to be as "fulsome and
comprehensive as possible" within ethical and legal boundaries.
Yates
also warned in her opening testimony that there were some issues she
could not address publicly because they involved classified information.
Similarly, she said that as a former official she was not authorized to
discuss Department of Justice or other executive branch deliberations.
It was not immediately clear how those constraints would affect her
testimony on the Flynn question. Neither Flynn nor Trump were directly
referenced in her opening statement.
"The
efforts by a foreign adversary to interfere and undermine our
democratic processes — and those of our allies — pose a serious threat
to all Americans," Yates said.
Graham
asked Yates whether she had any information about whether there was
collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia.
"My answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information," Yates said.
At
one point in the hearing Graham asked both Clapper and Yates how
information about Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador,
that eventually led to his sacking, made it into the newspapers. Trump
asked a similar question earlier on Twitter. Both former official said
they did not know how that happened.
Trump
went on the offensive on Twitter Monday morning, hours before the
hearing began, blaming the Obama administration for Flynn's security
clearance and asking the committee to question Yates over leaking
classified information to the media.
"General
Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama
Administration - but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that,"
Trump wrote, adding later,
"Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information
got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Council."
A
White House official told CNN that the administration plans to rebut
Yates by employing two strategies: Calling into question her objectivity
by arguing she is a partisan Democrat and questioning the timeline of
events she is expected to present.
The
Senate judiciary committee's crime and terrorism subcommittee also
heard from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who
spoke in advance of Yates. He testified that he did not know about the
FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the election and whether
there were any links to the Trump campaign until its existence was
announced in a congressional hearing by FBI Director James Comey in
March.
"During my tenure as DNI, it
was my practice to defer to the FBI director -- both (former FBI)
Director (Robert) Mueller and Director Comey -- on whether, when, and to
what extent they would inform me about such investigations," Clapper
said.
Clapper issued a clarion call for vigilance over Russian election interference before it further eroded US democracy.
"They
must be congratulating themselves for having exceeded their wildest
expectations," he said. "They are now emboldened to continue such
activities in the future, both here and around the world, and to do so
even more intensely."
Graham, the
leader of Monday's hearing, also invited former President Barack Obama's
national security adviser, Susan Rice, to testify with Yates and
Clapper, but she rejected the invitation through
her lawyer, noting the last-minute timing of the invitation. A source
familiar with Rice's discussions told CNN that when Graham invited her,
Rice believed it was a bipartisan overture and was prepared to accept.
However, ranking Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse indicated to her that the
invitation was made without his agreement, as he believed her presence
was not relevant to the topic of the hearing, according to the source.
Of the four former Trump campaign aides at the center of the Capitol Hill's Russia probes -- including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former foreign policy adviser Carter Page and former campaign adviser Roger Stone -- Flynn has generated the most heat following a steady stream of revelations.
Investigators on the House oversight committee raised
the possibility last month that Flynn may have broken the law by not
disclosing payments from RT-TV, widely considered by US officials to be a
propaganda arm of the Russian government, on his 2016 national security
clearance form. Flynn's lawyer at the time argued that Flynn had been
open about his speech to RT-TV, including briefing the Defense
Intelligence Agency on his trip.
Yates' appearance itself had been fraught with drama ever since House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes' delayed her House hearing at
the last minute, as part of a chaotic three-week stretch that saw the
House Russia investigation almost fall apart and Nunes become the
subject of a House ethics probe.
The
Washington Post reported at the time that the White House had blocked
Yates by asserting executive privilege, which allows the President to
stop a former aide from testifying. White House press secretary Sean
Spicer vehemently denied the reports at the time and said that the White House actively supports Yates' testifying in public.
A
White House official said last week that the administration still wants
Yates to testify in public and reaffirmed Spicer's comments. Graham and
Whitehouse also said they heard of no effort to stop her from coming
before them.
Still, Democrats on
the House Russia investigation are anxiously watching Monday's hearing:
First, to see if Yates shows up and, second, to see how much she reveals
publicly.
This story has been updated and will be updated as news develops.
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