While everyone will be talking about James Comey’s unusual firing, hand delivered by a once part-time bodyguard, more than a few will rave about Sally Q. Yates’ testimony to a Senate subcommittee on Monday, which had grabbed everyone's attention, until Mr. Comey was booted.
Ms. Yates said that she had warned the White House when she was serving as acting attorney general that Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, was vulnerable to blackmail by the Russian government because he had lied to the vice president about his contacts with Russian officials.
“We felt like the vice president and others were entitled to know that the information they were conveying to the American people wasn’t true,” Ms. Yates said. “We were concerned that the American people had been misled about underlying conduct and what Gen. Flynn had done.”
But Mr. Trump didn’t immediately fire Mr. Flynn, who resigned weeks later, only after the Washington Post reported that Mr. Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Ms. Yates told the subcommittee that at a meeting with White House Counsel Donald McGahn, in which she told him that Mr. Flynn might be in a position for blackmail by Moscow because he had lied about his contacts with them, Mr. McGahn asked her, “What does it matter to the Justice Department if one White House official lies to another?”
And isn’t that what it all boils down to? What does it matter to anyone if the President of the United States is a pathological liar? What does it matter if those in his administration are okay with not being straight with the American people? What does it matter if the acting attorney general was fired on Jan. 30 for refusing the to defend his executive ban against Muslims.
This isn’t the last we’ll see of Ms. Yates, who’ve become a hero to everyone who is against what the Trump administration has come to stand for: dishonesty and what can only be described as, dare I say it, corruption.
