Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates on Tuesday excoriated President Trump at the Democratic National Convention, marking a sharp partisan turn for the former career federal prosecutor.
“Public servants promise to defend our Constitution. Uphold our laws. And work on behalf of the American people. But from the moment President Trump took office, he has used his position to benefit himself rather than our country,” said Yates, who was acting attorney general from Jan. 20-30, 2017.
“He’s trampled the rule of law, trying to weaponize our Justice Department to attack his enemies and protect his friends,” Yates said during the virtual Democratic convention that’s set to make Joe Biden the nominee. “We need a president who respects our laws and the privilege of public service. Who reflects our values and cares about our people. We need a president who will restore the soul of America.”
Yates became a national figure in January 2017, having warned the new Trump administration that national security adviser Michael Flynn had not been truthful about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, claiming he was vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence.
Yates, 59, was fired from the Justice Department on Jan. 30, 2017, after she refused to enforce the Trump administration’s travel ban order while briefly heading the Justice Department as the president’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, awaited confirmation.
She had been deputy attorney general during the final two years of the Obama administration and ascended to acting attorney general once Attorney General Loretta Lynch resigned upon Trump’s inauguration.
Her 10-day tenure was dominated by her involvement with the investigation into Flynn, whose contacts with foreign government officials, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, allegedly led her to fear he may be compromised.
Yates testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in early August that “[she doesn’t] remember” whether Biden brought up the Logan Act during a January 2017 Oval Office meeting. She also claimed that neither President Barack Obama nor Biden tried to influence any investigation during the small meeting, which included herself, Obama, Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, and former national security adviser Susan Rice.
In recent interviews, Biden has contradicted himself on what he knew about the Flynn investigation.
Yates also contradicted Comey’s public pronouncements when she agreed that British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier was “critically important” to the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Yates admitted that “there is certainly evidence now that there was not at the time that calls into question the reliability of many portions of the Steele dossier.”
Yates said she was “shocked” by the misconduct described in DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report and said Comey went “rogue” with the FBI’s interview of Flynn.
From her key perch at the DOJ, Yates signed off on the first FISA warrant application against Page in October 2016 and also approved the first warrant renewal in January 2017 before being fired by Trump.
Former FBI Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson described to lawmakers in 2018 the “unusual” way the first surveillance request targeting Page was handled by top leadership, including Yates.
Yates testified that, if she knew then what she knows now about the host of glaring problems related to the Page FISAs, she would not have approved it.
“I wouldn’t sign anything that I knew to contain errors or omissions,” she told Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, this month.
Declassified footnotes indicate the bureau became aware that Steele’s discredited dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation. Recent revelations include that Steele relied on a subsource who employed shady Russian subsources and contradicted Steele’s dossier.
