May 8, 2017

Trump Has Already Pre-Smeared Sally Yates

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Sally Yates is a career civil servant in the Justice Department. She was hired under the first Bush administration, promoted during the Clinton administration, promoted again during the second Bush administration, and yet again under the Obama administration. Two years ago she was named deputy attorney general, the second ranking position in the department, and then became acting attorney general when Loretta Lynch left. President Trump asked her to stay on until Jeff Sessions was confirmed, and she agreed. A few days later, after declining to defend Trump’s immigration order in court, she was fired.

Today she’s scheduled to testify about what she told the White House regarding National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s connections to Russia. Trump isn’t waiting, though. He’s decided to pre-smear her:

Hmmm. I get the impression that Trump is pretty sure her testimony is going to be damaging. We already know that she warned the Trumpies that Flynn had lied about his contacts with Russia, and today we learned that President Obama had previously warned Trump away from hiring Flynn. (The White House response, apparently, is that they thought Obama was just kidding.) Despite all this, Trump hired Flynn and then kept him on. It was only when Flynn’s lying became public that Trump fired him.

Anyway, this should all guarantee a huge audience for today’s hearing. It’s at 2:30 pm Eastern, which probably means 3 pm once all the preliminary throat clearing and speechifying is done.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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