In the early days of the presidency the White House counsel warned Donald Trump that Michael Flynn had probably lied to the FBI and yet Trump did not fire him until after a Washington Post article.

Don McGhan, White House legal counsel.

Courtesy of Foreign Policy: 

The White House turned over records this fall to special counsel Robert Mueller revealing that in the very first days of the Trump presidency, Don McGahn researched federal law dealing both with lying to federal investigators and with violations of the Logan Act, a centuries-old federal law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, according to three people with direct knowledge of the confidential government documents. 

The records reflected concerns that McGahn, the White House counsel, had that Michael Flynn, then the president’s national security advisor, had possibly violated either one or both laws at the time, according to two of the sources. 

The disclosure that these records exist and that they are in the possession of the special counsel could bolster any potential obstruction of justice case against President Donald Trump. The records that McGahn turned over to the special counsel, portions of which were read to this reporter, indicate he researched both statutes and warned Trump about Flynn’s possible violations. 

McGahn conducted the analysis shortly after learning that Flynn, on Dec. 29, 2016 — while Barack Obama was still president — had counseled the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, Sergey Kislyak, not to retaliate against U.S. economic sanctions imposed against Russia by the outgoing administration. 

McGahn believed that Flynn, and possibly anyone who authorized or approved of such contacts, would be in potential violation of the Logan Act, according to two of the sources, both of whom work in the administration.

I would contend that the "anyone who authorized or approved of such contacts" means Donald Trump.  Either directly or indirectly.

It is very clear that Trump, at least in the beginning of this presidency, was very hands on and was involved in essentially all of the decision making.

And that would explain this next part: 

Despite McGahn’s concerns that Flynn violated one or both of these laws, Trump allowed Flynn to continue in his job and only fired him after the Washington Post reported that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other senior administration officials about his contacts with Kislyak. That was 18 days after then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed McGahn of her own concerns about Flynn’s covert diplomacy with Russia prior to Trump taking office.

Why would Trump suddenly fire Flynn if Flynn was simply following his own orders?

I never believed that Trump fired Flynn for lying to Mike Pence, and have always seen that as a convenient excuse.

Flynn was let go because Flynn got caught, and now that he has made a plea deal with the Special Counsel Robert Mueller know EVERYTHING.

No wonder the White House and the Republicans are trying to undermine this investigation.

Robert Mueller's focus on the Michael Flynn timeline suggests that he is building a case for obstruction. Update!

Courtesy of NBC News:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to piece together what happened inside the White House over a critical 18-day period that began when senior officials were told that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to blackmail by Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. 

The questions about what happened between Jan. 26 and Flynn's firing on Feb. 13 appear to relate to possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, say two people familiar with Mueller's investigation into Russia's election meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign. 

Multiple sources say that during interviews, Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and others who have worked in the West Wing, to go through each day that Flynn remained as national security adviser and describe in detail what they knew was happening inside the White House as it related to Flynn.

Some of those interviewed by Mueller's team believe the goal is in part to determine if there was a deliberate effort by President Trump or top officials in the West Wing to cover up the information about Flynn that Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, conveyed to McGahn on Jan. 26. In addition to Flynn, McGahn is also expected to be critical to federal investigators trying to piece together a timeline of those 18 days.

Essentially Flynn lied to the FBI. two days later Sally Yates told Don McGahn that Flynn lied, McGahn told Trump, Trump fired Yates, and then only after the press started to report on some of this did Trump finally fire Flynn.

So it would appear that there is a solid case to be made for obstruction.

However I actually think that Mueller is coming at this from several different angles.

I think that he well might make a case for obstructionism, but that he is also looking to flip Manfort and then Kushner and make the case for conspiracy as well.

I think that is why Trump is starting to lose his shit and why there is increasing talk about firing Mueller, while the Right Wing propaganda outlets prepare the base to accept that decision.

Courtesy of New York Magazine: 

Trump is preparing to shut down Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian intervention in the 2016 election. 

The administration and its allied media organs, especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, have spent months floating a series of rationales, of varying degrees of implausibility, for why a deeply respected Republican law-enforcement veteran is disqualified to lead the inquiry: He is friends with James Comey, who is biased because Trump fired him; Comey is biased because he pursued leads turned up in Christopher Steele’s investigation, which was financed by Democrats; Mueller has failed to investigate Hillary Clinton’s marginal-to-nonexistent role in a uranium sale. 

The newest pseudo-scandal fixates on the role of Peter Strzok, an FBI official who helped tweak the language Comey employed in his statement condemning Clinton’s email carelessness and has also worked for Mueller. His alleged crime is a series of text messages criticizing Trump. Mueller removed Strzok from his team, but that is not enough for Trump’s supporters, who are seizing on Strzok’s role as a pretext to discredit and remove Mueller, too. The notion that a law-enforcement official should be disqualified for privately expressing partisan views is a novel one, and certainly did not trouble Republicans last year, when Rudy Giuliani was boasting on television about his network of friendly agents. Yet in the conservative media, Mueller and Comey have assumed fiendish personae of almost Clintonian proportions.

As I have said before, if this happens it will blow this investigation wide open, and essentially prove the case for obstruction.

I would bet big money that Trump is itching to fire Mueller and that the only thing holding him back are his lawyers and advisers telling him that it would be political suicide.

The only question is, how long can they hold him at bay?

Update:  

Okay this tidbit from the NBC report was brought to my attention, take a look at this: Mueller is trying to determine why Flynn remained in his post for 18 days after Trump learned of Yates' warning, according to two people familiar with the probe. He appears to be interested in whether Trump directed him to lie to senior officials, including Pence, or the FBI, and if so why, the sources said.

Okay well that is a whole new dimension to all of this.

That is suggesting that Mueller may have evidence that Trump not only ignored evidence that Michael Flynn lied to the FBI, but that he himself may have instructed him to do so.

If that pans out, I do not think that even the Republican majorities in the Senate and House can protect him from impeachment.

Sally Yates does her first sit down interview since being fired with Anderson Cooper tonight.

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates tells @AC360 that the Russians had "real leverage" over Michael Flynn https://t.co/oQtwNi4BFO pic.twitter.com/SE4OfAoMBU

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 16, 2017

Well I know what I am going to be riveted to this evening.

Here is more courtesy of Politico:

The Russian government had “real leverage” over former national security adviser Michael Flynn when he was fired by President Donald Trump, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said in an interview that aired Tuesday morning. 

Yates informed the White House that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about the nature of conversations he had had with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., information she delivered shortly before she was fired over her unwillingness to defend the president’s executive order banning individuals from certain majority-Muslim nations from entering the nation.

Yates denied an allegation from the president that it was she who had leaked the information regarding Flynn to the Post, telling Cooper that she had never leaked classified information to the newspaper nor had she authorized anyone else to do so. She also said that Flynn’s actions were potentially criminal in nature, even though White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said that the former national security adviser was let go because of a “trust issue” and not over legal concerns. 

“I don't know how the white house reached the conclusion there was no legal issue,” she said. “It certainly wasn't from my discussion with them.” 

I think Yates may have been the first official to understand that the Trump folks had a very suspicious relationship with Russia.

And now of course we all know that.

Yates also said this is in an interview with The New Yorker:  

Yates declined to talk about any classified information, including underlying evidence in the Flynn case, but it seems clear that Flynn’s name was not masked in the reports on the phone call that she saw. She said, “I oftentimes would get intel reports that included the name of the U.S. person. Not because I or anybody else had asked for it to be unmasked, but because that intelligence only made sense if you knew who the identity of the U.S. person was, and that’s an exception to the minimization requirements.” In other words, the authors of these intelligence reports included the names, because the reports could not be understood without them. She noted that there was one other common instance in which an American’s name would be included: “If it’s evidence of a crime.” 

Yates said that she never made an unmasking request, adding, “This idea that there’s this dramatic unmasking of a name—in my experience, that never happened.”

Just another made up conspiracy by the Republicans to provide cover for an actual scandal by one of their own. 

Well you knew this was coming, Democrats trying to convince Sally Yates to run for governor of Georgia in 2018.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Some Democrats in Georgia, Yates’s home state, want her to run in the 2018 gubernatorial race on the grounds that her prominent clashes with Trump positions her as a concrete embodiment of the Democratic “resistance.” 

Yates, who spent 27 years working in the Justice Department before Trump fired her, has given no public indication that she’s interested in a bid. Still, some top gubernatorial hopefuls in the state are already considering how Yates could alter the race. 

“Sally Yates’s calm and strong demeanor showed me she could be a great governor of Georgia. ... Her bold resistance, and how she stood up to a president who ordered her to do something unlawful and unconstitutional, has catapulted her profile,” said Tharon Johnson, a Georgia Democratic strategist and campaign aide to former President Barack Obama. 

“She will have to give Georgians a really good reason why she’s not considering running for a constitutional office in 2018.”

I was just talking to one of my friends the other day and saying that I have no doubt that Sally Yates has a future in politics.

I was thinking more along the lines of a Senate seat, but I imagine she would make a fine governor as well. 

White House spokesperson Sean Spicer calls Sally Yates a "Hillary supporter," and uses that as excuse for why her warnings about Flynn were not taken seriously.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Sally Yates’ warning couldn’t be fully trusted, press secretary Sean Spicer said, because she was “a political opponent” of Trump and a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. 

“Just because someone comes in and gives you a heads-up about something and says, ‘I want to share some information,’ doesn’t mean that you immediately jump the gun and go take an action,” Spicer said. “I think if you flip this scenario and say, ‘What if we had just dismissed somebody because a political opponent of the president had made an utterance?’ you would argue that it was pretty irrational to act in that matter.” 

Asked how he knew Yates was a Clinton supporter, Spicer said: “She was widely rumored to play a large role in the Justice Department if Hillary Clinton had won.” 

Spicer also repeatedly referred to Yates’ warning as “a heads up” about Flynn – a less urgent description than the one Yates outlined in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday.

It should be noted that Sally Yates offered evidence to support her allegation that Michael Flynn was compromised, but Trump fired her before he even saw that evidence. 

Dismissing a thirty year professional like Sally Yates, as simply a "Hillary supporter" is not only insulting but I think it smacks of misogyny. 

The facts are that Sally Yates did her job, and if the Trump White House had listened to her on the Michael Flynn matter, as well as the Muslim ban, they would have saved themselves a whole truckload of problems.

But why would they listen to her?

After all she was only a woman.

Donald Trump's Twitter response to the testimony from Sally Yates was...you know...predictable.

Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is "no evidence" of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

Yes but Sally Yates said she could not answer this question due to the information being classified.

Sally Yates made the fake media extremely unhappy today --- she said nothing but old news!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

Did he even watch the same testimony we watched yesterday?

The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

I'm guessing when you are in jail.

Biggest story today between Clapper & Yates is on surveillance. Why doesn't the media report on this? #FakeNews!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

Incorrect again. If anything Clapper put to rest any notion that there was any illegal or politically motivated surveillance directed at Trump and his associates.

The surveillance that was done was for the safety of the country.

By the way there is now some concern that Trump attempted to threaten Sally Yates with this tweet before the hearing:

Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

No I think that every day we are getting closer and closer to proving that the Trump-Russia collusion story is anything but "a total hoax."

The Sally Yates Senate Testimony Open Thread. Update!

Trump has already started to do damage control ahead of this testimony, here is his tweet from this morning which he found so nice he posted it twice.

Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

A good place to remind people that if somebody had not leaked this information that Michael Flynn might very well still be Trump's National Security adviser.

Whoever leaked that information is a national hero.

And here is the White House strategy according to Axios: 

1. Brand Yates as a Democratic operative who was out to get Trump from the beginning and willing to torque the facts to advance her agenda; 
2. Put as much distance as possible between Flynn and the man whose side he rarely left during the campaign (which could be a tall order.) 
3. Portray Flynn, and no one else, as responsible for this mess.

Portraying Yates as a Democratic operative may turn out to be a challenge since she cut her teeth by prosecuting both conservatives and liberals.

Trump's troll army has already started questioning her ethics, politics, and intelligence.

I imagine it will only get worse from there.

Update:

Sally Yates will not answer whether there was collusion between Russia and Trump campaign. Cites confidentiality. Yikes! #SallyYates

— Gryphen 2009 (@Gryphen2009) May 8, 2017

Yates states that she does not know who leaked the confidential information to the press. Somebody tell @realDonaldTrump #SallyYates

— Gryphen 2009 (@Gryphen2009) May 8, 2017

Yates told Obama White House that Michael Flynn could have been blackmailed. In other words, she did her job. #SallyYates

— Gryphen 2009 (@Gryphen2009) May 8, 2017

Update 2: Interesting and not unexpected.

Hill Sources: White House contacted multiple GOP Senators TODAY asking them to cancel Yates hearing#SallyYatesIsAPatriot #SallyYates

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) May 8, 2017

Update 3: A must see.

Sally Yates just shut down Ted Cruz on Constitutional Law. pic.twitter.com/ONlwEYm64D

— jordan 🌹 (@JordanUhl) May 8, 2017

Damn, did I love that!

Former Acting AG Sally Yates is scheduled to testify Monday, at which time she will completely refute the Trump Administration's story on Michael Flynn.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates is prepared to testify before a Senate panel next week that she gave a forceful warning to the White House regarding then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn nearly three weeks before he was fired, contradicting the administration's version of events, sources familiar with her account tell CNN. 

In a private meeting January 26, Yates told White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn was lying when he denied in public and private that he had discussed US sanctions on Russia in conversations with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak. Flynn's misleading comments, Yates said, made him potentially vulnerable to being compromised by Russia, according to sources familiar with her version of events. She expressed "serious concerns" to McGahn, making it clear -- without making a recommendation -- that Flynn could be fired. 

Yates' testimony May 8 will be the first time the former acting attorney general will publicly speak about the White House meeting. A source familiar with the situation says that Yates will be limited on what she can tell the Senate judiciary subcommittee because many of the details involving Flynn are classified, meaning there may only be a few new revelations. 

Yates would not comment ahead of the testimony.

I am REALLY looking forward to this testimony.

Just as much as I am sure that the Trump Administration is dreading it.

More good news, it appears that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates will finally testify before the House Intelligence Committee.

Courtesy of Politico:

The House Intelligence Committee is working to reschedule a hearing on Russia with members of the Obama administration, including former acting Attorney General Sally Yates. 

The committee announced Friday that it has invited Yates, along with former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, to testify before the panel. The open hearing would be scheduled after May 2, the committee said.

The three had been scheduled to testify in March, but Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) abruptly canceled the session after the Trump administration raised concerns about it. Nunes has since stepped aside from leading the Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, with Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) taking the helm. 

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, has been urging Republicans to reschedule the hearing — and has hinted that Yates’ testimony could be damaging for President Donald Trump.

Oh I think we can all rest assured that Yates' testimony will be damaging for Donald Trump.

That's why Nunes canceled her testimony the first time.

Personally I am pretty excited to hear what Yates has to say. It should be very enlightening.

So why is the Trump administration so afraid of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates?

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

The Trump administration sought to block former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying to Congress in the House investigation of links between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The Washington Post has learned, a position that is likely to further anger Democrats who have accused Republicans of trying to damage the inquiry. 

According to letters The Post reviewed, the Justice Department notified Yates earlier this month that the administration considers a great deal of her possible testimony to be barred from discussion in a congressional hearing because the topics are covered by the presidential communication privilege.Yates and other former intelligence officials had been asked to testify before the House Intelligence Committee this week, a hearing that was abruptly canceled by the panel’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). 

Yates was the deputy attorney general in the final years of the Obama administration, and served as the acting attorney general in the first days of the Trump administration.

Well gee that seems suspicious.

Why would the Trump administration not want the American people to hear what Sally Yates had to say?  

Yates and another witness at the planned hearing, former CIA director John Brennan, had made clear to government officials by Thursday that their testimony to the committee probably would contradict some statements that White House officials had made, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The following day, when Yates’s lawyer sent a letter to the White House indicating that she still wanted to testify, the hearing was canceled.

Ooooh.

For their part the White House is denying all of this.

Courtesy of TPM: 

White House press secretary Sean Spicer, in an emailed statement to TPM, called the Post’s story “entirely false.” 

“The White House has taken no action to prevent Sally Yates from testifying and the Department of Justice specifically told her that it would not stop her and to suggest otherwise is completely irresponsible,” he continued.

And boy we know how dedicated to the truth old Spicey is, don't we? 

Okay well now I want to hear what Yates has to say more than ever.

Time to start applying the pressure.

Sally Yates, the Attorney General Trump fired for refusing to defend his Muslim ban, has been nominated for the President Kennedy Profile in Courage award.

Just told w/ Sally Yates I've nominated her 4 President Kennedy’s Profile in Courage Award 4 standing 4 the public good #ThankYouSallyYates

— Jackie Speier (@RepSpeier) January 31, 2017

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Sally Yates took a stand for something she believed in, and one of her fellow Americans thanked her by nominating her for a prestigious award for public officials. 

President Donald Trump fired the former acting attorney general on Monday night for refusing to defend his recent executive order suspending refugee resettlement and banning entry of individuals from seven predominantly Muslim countries. 

Yates was fired after she advised Justice Department lawyers also not to defend Trump’s executive order. She wrote them a letter saying she wasn’t “convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities, nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful.” 

People around the country and the internet have come out to show their support for Yates, and the hashtags #ThankYouSally, #ThankYouSallyYates and #SallyYates were all trending on Twitter. 

But one act of appreciation stands out above the rest. 

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) tweeted out Tuesday afternoon that she had nominated Yates for the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

I love this so much.

And if she were to win it would be the biggest "fuck you" to Donald Trump that I can imagine.

Perhaps we can start a precedent and find away to give an award to EVERYBODY with the balls to stand up to Trump in defense of this country.