Sally Yates, the former acting United States attorney general who drew the ire of President Donald Trump for issuing instructions to the Department of Justice not to defend his first "travel ban" executive order, is scheduled to testify today before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into Russian interference in last year's presidential election.
Yates' testimony will push the story of the Trump's campaign alleged ties to Russia back into the headlines, especially, if expected, she asserts that she warned Trump campaign officials that Flynn, the now-deposed national security adviser, was not telling the full truth about his contacts with Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
FILE - Then deputy attorney general Sally Yates testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 24, 2015. Marshall Billingslea, a former George W. Bush official on Trump's transition team asked the Obama administration for a Central Intelligence Agency profile of Kislyak, but it's not clear Flynn read the document, per the Post.
On Monday, Yates will testify to a Senate subcommittee about her discussions with the White House, testimony that was delayed for more than a month after a previously scheduled appearance before a House committee was canceled amid a legal dispute over whether she would even be allowed to discuss the subject.
Both White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer have asserted that Yates passed along information about which the White House counsel checked out and found nothing. Instead, her brief time in the job has fueled months of fierce political debate on the White House and Russian Federation. The concern - compounded by surge of new intelligence, including evidence of multiple calls, texts and at least one in-person meeting between Flynn and Kislyak - would eventually grow so great Obama advisers delayed telling Trump's team about plans to punish Russian Federation for its election meddling.
The committee, which carries subpoena power, sent letters to former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, former national-security adviser Mike Flynn, former campaign adviser Roger Stone and former campaign foreign-policy adviser Carter Page, according to people familiar with the matter. But since then, her profile has only risen following revelations that she said she forcefully warned the administration about former national security adviser Michael Flynn's communications with a Russian diplomat weeks before Flynn was sacked.
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But Trump also said that he would terminate NAFTA "if we're unable to make a deal, but hopefully we won't have to do that". This week the U.S. administration announced it would slap hefty tariffs on softwood lumber being imported from Canada.
Trump said the firing was because Flynn lied about his talks with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the transition period.
Flynn was asked to resign in February, after White House officials said he had misled Pence about the nature of his conversation with the ambassador.
The request for the profile came from Marshall Billingslea, the head of Trump's national security transition team until a little before the election.
Dianne Feinstein (D-California) a member of the Senate Judiciary Intelligence Committee, "and that would be what she knew about Michael Flynn's connections to Russian Federation". As of last Friday, House investigators still had not settled on a date for her new hearing or if there will be one at all.
"Since their colleagues in the intelligence community already have most of the same personal information which was reportedly sucked up during the Obama administration's domestic political intelligence operation, I'm hoping that the Senate provides me the same information in time to proceed with the next steps in the current fishing expedition", Mr. Page told The Washington Times.
"My responsibility is to ensure that the position of the Department of Justice is not only legally defensible, but is informed by our best view of what the law is after consideration of all the facts", Yates wrote on January 30.
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