President Donald Trump told senators to ask his former acting attorney general about how classified information about his election campaign was leaked to US media.
“Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Council [sic],” the US President tweeted on Monday.
Yates is expected to testify before a Senate judiciary subcommittee later on Monday.
The testimony was delayed for more than a month after a previously-scheduled meeting before a House committee was canceled over a legal debate whether or not she is entitled to discuss the subject, according to Washington Post.
Yates, who was fired by Trump after her refusal to back his controversial ‘Muslim ban’ order, will be asked to give her account of the communication with the White House over former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
According to media reports, Yates told the White House that Flynn might have misled the Trump administration about the content of his conversation with Kislyak.In February, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters that Yates had “informed the White House counsel that they wanted to give a heads up to us on some comments that may have seemed in conflict … The White House counsel informed the president immediately.
“The president asked him to conduct a review of whether there was a legal situation there. That was immediately determined that there wasn’t,” Spicer added.