Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization, has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to gain access to the emails of the former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.
According to the group’s statement, which came the day after Yates testified to a Senate panel about Russian interference in last year’s election, Judicial Watch filed suit against the Department of Justice after it “failed to respond to a February 1, 2017, FOIA request seeking access to her emails between January 21, 2017, and January 31, 2017.”
“Between her involvements in the Russian surveillance scandal and her lawless effort to thwart President Trump’s immigration executive order, Sally Yates short tenure as the acting Attorney General was remarkably troubling,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
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“Her email traffic might provide a window into how the anti-Trump ‘deep state’ abused the Justice Department,” he added.
Yates, who was a deputy attorney general under former President Obama, became acting attorney general for President Trump in January, but she was fired after refusing to back the president’s travel ban on immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries.
On Monday, Yates gave a testimony about the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, telling lawmakers that she warned the White House about Flynn’s possible vulnerability to Russian blackmail.
“We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians,” Yates said.
“Logic would tell you that you don’t want the national security adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him,” she added.