"WASHINGTON — Less than a week into the Trump administration, Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, hurried to the White House with an urgent concern. The president’s national security adviser, she said, had lied to the vice president about his Russian contacts and was vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow.
‘We wanted to tell the White House as quickly as possible,’ Ms. Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Monday. ‘To state the obvious: You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians.’
But President Trump did not immediately fire the adviser, Michael T. Flynn, over the apparent lie or the susceptibility to blackmail. Instead, Mr. Flynn remained in office for 18 more days. Only after the news of his false statements broke publicly did he lose his job on Feb. 13.
Ms. Yates’s testimony, along with a separate revelation Monday that President Barack Obama had warned Mr. Trump not to hire Mr. Flynn, offered a more complete public account of Mr. Flynn’s stunning fall from one of the nation’s most important security posts.
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Nancy 3 minutes ago Sally Yates shows the men in the Senate what integrity means. She has twice acted heroically at a moment when we desperately need heroes. ... Jusme 3 minutes ago Lock him up. Arlee 3 minutes ago Donald Trump as well as Michael Flynn are Russian assets. There is only one explanation for Trump's behavior with his tax returns and with... SEE ALL COMMENTS WRITE A COMMENT It also raised fresh doubts about Mr. Trump’s judgment in keeping Mr. Flynn in place despite serious Justice Department concerns. White House officials have not fully explained why they waited so long.
‘I don’t have any way of knowing what, if anything, they did,’ Ms. Yates said. ‘If nothing was done, then certainly that would be concerning.’"
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