Incriminating evidence in the election case

The US Department of Justice believed that Michael Flynn, a former assistant to President Trump on National Security, could become an object of blackmail from the Kremlin. This was reported on Monday during the Senate hearings, the former acting Minister of Justice Sally Iates. This recognition was the sensation of the next hearings on the investigation of Russia's intervention in the American presidential campaign.

Sally Yates

The performance of Sally Iates, who was invited to hear with the former head of American national intelligence James Clapper, perhaps the most anticipated in a series of performances of former and current employees of American intelligence agencies related to the Russian investigation. Iats, who acted as the Minister of Justice and the Prosecutor General, was dismissed by President Trump after she refused to instruct her subordinates to defend the presidential decree in the courts to suspend the entry into the United States of citizens of several countries with the prevailing Muslim population. She considered this decree illegal. The presidential opponents hoped that Iites, who oversee the post, conducted the investigation conducted by the FBI, will publish new data on people from the environment of the candidate Donald Trump with Russian citizens, while the president’s supporters intended to demand from her a report on who organized the leakage of secret information, that Michael Flynn fell into the field of attention of American special services.

A few hours before the beginning of the hearing, President Trump, on his message on Twitter, called on the senators to ask Sally Iates, "how secret information found the way to the newspapers after she provided her with a White House adviser."

Iites did not justify the hopes of either one or the others. She constantly referred in her answers that she could not give publicity to secret information or information about investigations conducted by American law enforcement agencies. But she reported her two meetings with the White House legal adviser at the end of January, during which she warned the White House that Michael Flynn lied when he told Vice President Michael Pensu that he did not discuss the fate of the sanctions during a telephone conversation with the Russian ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak.

Michael Flynn and Vladimir Putin at a reception in honor of the 10th anniversary of the RT channel

The information that Flynn spoke with Kislyak on the very day when President Obama announced the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the United States as a punishment for interfering with the American election campaign, caused amazement in the American press. Vice President Pence hastened to publicly announce that there was nothing close to the sanctions about anything close to the phone. It was this assurance of the vice president that made the acting The Minister of Justice to warn the White House that Flynn lied to Pence, in fact there was a conversation about sanctions.

- First of all, we explained that General Flynn's behavior is very problematic. Secondly, we believed that the vice president and other officials had the right to know that the information that they provided to the American audience was not true. Thirdly, we were concerned that the Americans were misleading regarding General Flynn’s actions, and, finally, not only we were aware of Flynn's behavior. The Russians also knew what he did. They knew that General Flynn misled the vice president of Pence. And this was the problem. A situation was created when the presidential adviser to national security could become an object of blackmail from the Russians. We reported that we were transferring this information to the adviser to President Trump, so that the White House took measures that he will consider appropriate, ” Sally Iates said during the hearing.

Donald Trump with advisers (Michael Flynn Extreme on the right)

After this warning, Michael Flynn remained as adviser to President Trump for National Security for another 18 days, while Iites was resigned two days later. General Flynn was dismissed only after the appearance of an article in The Washington Post with reference to sources in the American government, which said the real details of his conversation with the Russian Ambassador. This 18-day delay in Flinn’s detachment gave a reason to Trump’s critics to again raise questions about the connections with Russia of people from the president’s entourage when his candidate. Several democrats emphasized that for them this issue is one of the main in the investigation of Russian intervention in the American presidential election.

Influential analyst-lawyer CNN CNN Jeffrey Tubin says the situation is unprecedented:

- What happens after Iates reports this to the White House? Nothing happens before The Washington Post reports that Flynn was compromised. If there were no leaks of this information, on the illegality of which the Republicans want to concentrate, Michael Flynn, most likely, would remain an adviser in national security. And this, in my opinion, is very alarming.

The chaired by the Senator-Republican Lindsay Graham calls the two, from his point of view, the main goals that legislators pursue:

Lindsay Graham

- There are, so to speak, two fronts: the question of what the Russians did, whether there was a certain conspiracy between the headquarters of Trump and Russia. Secondly, I want to know what the system exists in our America, which allows you to accidentally collect information about citizens of the country, politicians, to whom this information is available and what they can do with it.

But, as observers notice, these hearings showed that while the Democrats and Republicans are investigating, based on their political reasons. Democrats use this opportunity for criticizing the Trump administration, Republicans are mostly interested in whether the figures of the former democratic administration or officials close to them are illegal for Trump's illegal leakage.