Sally Yates: Flynn talks with White House were not meant to discredit Pence

Yates was an Obama administration holdover who told White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn was not being truthful when he told Pence that none of his discussions with Russian officials involved U.S. sanctions against Russia. Flynn later admitted he wasn’t truthful about that with Pence, which is why he was fired.

Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that when she raised the issue with McGahn, they were not looking to trap Pence.

“[W]e told him we felt like the vice president and others were entitled to know that the information that they were conveying to the American people wasn’t true,” she said.

“And we wanted to make it really clear right out of the gate that we were not accusing Vice President Pence of knowingly providing false information to the American people,” she added. “And in fact, Mr. McGahn responded back to me to let me know that anything that … Vice President Pence would have said would have been based on what Gen. Flynn would have told him.”

She said instead that she was worried that the “American people had been mislead” by Flynn’s comments.

Yates spoke in response to questions from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. He and other Democrats are pushing for answers about how Flynn was able to cover up his contacts with Russian officials, while Republicans are pushing for information about how Flynn’s conversations were leaked.

Yates also stressed that her office was worried that Flynn’s actions could leave him open to blackmail by Russia, since Russia knew his comments were false.

“[T]his was a problem, because not only did we believe that the Russians knew this, but that they likely had proof of this information,” she said. “And, that created a compromise situation, a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.”