White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that he expected former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to tell the truth during her testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Since revelations Yates warned the Trump administration that ousted National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was a blackmail risk in that position, because he had misled the Vice President about his discussions of sanctions with the Russian ambassador, President Donald Trump has attacked her as a partisan leaker.
“Do you have any reason to doubt that her testimony, which will be under oath, will be truthful before this senate subcommittee?” one reporter asked Spicer during his daily press briefing Monday.
“I would assume that when you raise your right hand and agree to tell the truth and nothing but the truth that you’ll do that. That’s the whole reason you pledge,” he said.
Spicer also said at the press briefing that Yates had not, to his knowledge, cleared her testimony with the White House general counsel’s office. That point was subject to a brief controversy in late March, after Yates’ scheduled testimony to the House Intelligence Committee was cancelled.
Also on Monday, NBC News reported that former President Barack Obama himself warned Trump against bringing Flynn into his administration, according to three unnamed Obama administration officials. One unnamed Trump administration official told the network it seemed like Obama was joking about Flynn.
Eighteen days passed between Yates’ warning to White House Counsel Don McGahn about Flynn and Flynn’s forced resignation, after media reports about Flynn’s discussions of sanctions with the Russian ambassador.
Yates was fired as acting attorney general in the second week of the Trump administration, after she said she would refuse to defend his travel ban executive order.
