Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said she warned White House counsel Don McGahn about former national security adviser Michael Flynn so that the Trump administration could “act.”
“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,” Yates said in lengthy New Yorker interview published Monday.
“You should not worry about that,” Yates told McGahn when he asked whether taking action against Flynn would interfere with an FBI investigation.
{mosads}“It’s not going to impact the investigation. Flynn has already been interviewed. We’re telling you this so you can act,” she reportedly said.
Yates said she declined to answer when McGahn asked her in January whether Flynn should be fired.
She added that McGahn “got that it was serious” when they discussed Flynn on Jan. 26 and again on Jan. 27.
The Associated Press on Monday reported that Flynn is refusing to turn over records to the Senate Intelligence Committee due to “escalating public frenzy” surrounding the investigation into his possible ties to Russia.
Flynn’s lawyers reportedly sent the committee a letter it obtained that states he is invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refusing to testify as “any testimony he provides could be used against him.”
The letter also mentions the Justice Department’s appointment of a special counsel overseeing the investigation of possible ties between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Flynn previously offered to testify before the Senate and House Intelligence committees in exchange for immunity, but neither panel accepted his offer.
The former national security adviser was fired in February for reportedly misleading Vice President Pence and other White House officials about the contents of conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.