Yates rules out run for Georgia governor

by John Bowden - 05/16/17 12:24 PM ET

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is dismissing calls from Democrats for her to enter the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race.

“I am totally ruling out the governor’s race,” Yates said in an interview published Tuesday by The New Yorker. “I am not running for governor.”

Yates drew plenty of praise from the left after her testimony to senators earlier this month defending her brief time in the Trump White House, which included warning others about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s possibly compromising interactions with Russian officials.

President Trump fired Yates for refusing to back his travel ban against several Muslim-majority nations.

“She will have to give Georgians a really good reason why she’s not considering running for a constitutional office in 2018,” a Democratic strategist in the state told The Hill last week.

And Yates isn’t ruling out a political future. She told The New Yorker she recognizes her elevated position after Trump’s decision to fire her, and will put it to good use.

{mosads}

“I recognize that I may have a voice that I didn’t have before. And part of what I want to be able to do is to figure out how I can responsibly use that voice in a way to impact things that I think really matter,” she explained.

“I just don’t know what form that takes,” Yates added, “I’ve got to give something more back.”

Yates also pushed back against the White House’s narrative over the extent of her warning about Flynn.

“We had just gone and told them that the national-security adviser, of all people, was compromised with the Russians and that their vice president and others had been lying to the American people about it. We expected them to act,” Yates recalled.

It was more than a “heads-up,” Yates said. “I certainly never used that term.”

Yates also revealed that she had no knowledge of Trump’s plans to implement his controversial travel ban before it was announced.