Paul Sperry likens her to a “blackmailer.”
[I]n late December or early January, someone working under Obama’s own national security adviser, Susan Rice, unmasked routine NSA intercepts of the Russian ambassador. Was it to spy on Flynn, Rice’s replacement?Just days after the inauguration, moreover, Yates used those same NSA transcripts to try to get Flynn fired, by warning the White House that he was “vulnerable” to Russian extortion.
Despite her warnings, Flynn remained in his position for 18 more days…. He was only forced to resign after somebody from the Obama administration illegally leaked the intercepts to the Washington Post and created a political embarrassment for President Trump.
Unlike the Obama officials who disclosed highly classified information, Flynn committed no crime.
Though he misinformed Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversation with the Russian ambassador (the two did, in fact, discuss the sanctions Obama belatedly and conveniently slapped on Russia after the election), he did not make false statements to the FBI. And Flynn made no promises that the sanctions would be removed. The FBI declined to press charges.
Yates knew what the FBI knew when she raced over to the White House on Jan. 26 to warn Trump’s general counsel that Flynn was “compromised.” She also knew that the Obama administration had just weeks earlier renewed Flynn’s national security clearance at the highest levels. And that the intelligence community had “no evidence,” as Obama’s intelligence czar just reconfirmed, that Flynn “colluded” with Moscow.
Still, Yates insisted Flynn posed a threat to the government. Why? Because, she said, he failed to truthfully brief the vice president.
The implication was that unless Trump fired Flynn, he’d pay a price. So it was Yates, in a sense, who was blackmailing Trump.
“Why does it matter to the Justice Department if one White House official lies to another White House official?” White House Counsel Don McGahn reasonably asked Yates, when she rushed into his office with her hair on fire.
But that made no sense, as any “leverage” for blackmail ceases to be leverage when it is known by the people you’d tell it to — as was now the case here.
And that of course wasn’t Yates’ only action against Flynn – she also tried to get him prosecuted under you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me non-law the LOGAN ACT.
And who sent the FBI to investigate this dubious charge of Flynn violating the arcane and never-enforced Logan Act? None other than Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Yates famously joined the resistance to President Trump weeks after the inauguration by refusing to enforce the president’s Executive Order on extreme vetting for foreign nationals coming from certain countries known to engage in terror activities.
Note that when the FBI concluded Flynn hadn’t lied, the DOJ rushed to come up with a new theory why he was guilty of something anyway: And the pretext they chose was the LOGAN ACT.
The other theory they pushed was Yates’ he-could-be-blackmailed-by-information-our-pals-are-already-leaking-to-the-press theory.