Sally Yates for 2020
I propose we recruit Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to run in 2020. Here’s why:
Sally Quillian Yates — the first “public servant” to openly defy Trump and stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law. She’s fearless, has a steel spine, a fine wit, unimpeachable integrity, a strong moral compass, and personal experience in opposing a president in order to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. Sally Yates is the right person for this moment in our nation’s history. This would be the second time she faces off against Trump and the complicit GOP in Congress. She knows what it takes — and what’s at stake. She’s been there, done that.
This diary is my first in an effort to recruit former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to join the crowded Democratic field for President in 2020. [It’s also being published in DK’s New Candidates Spotlight Group.] She has not announced an intention to run. But she has made it clear that staying silent on the sidelines is not an option for anyone given the existential threat to our democracy. Her experience and her talents make her uniquely suited to face Trump and win in 2020.
INTRODUCING SALLY YATES
After Trump’s inauguration, he asked then Deputy AG Yates, 56, to stay on as Acting Attorney General. She agreed, thinking that the temporary position would constitute an uneventful few weeks while a new Attorney General was confirmed.
Within days, it became apparent that the new administration had created two major constitutional crises as it ignored the known security risks posed by General Michael Flynn, Trump’s pick for National Security Adviser, and made it’s top priority an Executive Order purpotedly drafted by non-lawyer Stephen Miller banning Muslims from numerous majority Muslim countries (but not Saudia Arabia and other countries with which Trump does business) from entering the U.S. [Yates role in warning the adminstration about Flynn’s troubling lies and associations are sufficiently well documented elsewhere, including in numerous diaries about the Mueller investigation. As of this date, he awaits sentencing.]
Trump’s Muslim ban was immediately challenged by several states in the Ninth Circuit, at which point Trump demanded that Yates defend His Executive Order. This was about ten days into his presidency and her sojurn as Acting AG. Yates could have quietly resigned without publicizing her concerns about the constitutionality of the EO and avoid taking on the new president’s first major act.
Instead, knowing she risked being fired despite decades of service as a federal prosecutor and a stellar career at the Department of Justice, after thoroughly studying the EO, she steadfastly refused, telling the newly sworn president that his signature Executive Order failed to pass Constitutional muster, and that she would not ask DOJ attorneys to go to federal court to support what she deemed to be an unconstitutional exercise of Executive power.
The details of the measured and reasoned letter Yates wrote to the president and distributed to the DOJ explaining her decision are riveting. They can be read in Ryan Lizza’s fascinating and lengthy May 29, 2017 New Yorker article “Why Sally Yates Stood Up to Trump” — www.newyorker.com/… [Lizza’s interview of Yates was a major factor behind my decision to undertake this effort to recruit Yates.]
The new president reputedly became appoplextic in private, using the “c___“ word according to Michael Wolffe’s bestseller, “Fire and Fury”. [Source: The Hill thehill.com/… quoting Wolffe’s book.] Furious, the president ordered a senior DOJ Trump appointee to hand deliver a letter to Yates firing her and ordering her immediate departure.
After her departure, the new administration’s first Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, dismissed her as an “Obama official” who was “soft” on border security.
Why did this rising star sacrifice her career and stand up to a new president who had just been sworn in and was riding a wave of right wing populist ecstasy?
Lizza’s New Yorker article is well worth reading in its entirety, despite its length. I will try not to go past fair use, but there is so much there that makes the case why this lifelong public servant is the right person for this moment in our country’s history. I urge everyone to read it before voting in the poll below as to whether you would support efforts to recruit her for 2020.
www.newyorker.com/…
Yates, who had spent more than two decades as a federal prosecutor in Georgia before being named a U.S. Attorney and then the Deputy Attorney General by President Obama, left Washington after being fired.
When she returned to Washington, more than three months later, it was to appear before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about her ten tumultuous days in the Trump Administration. Yates testified about the travel ban, and about the potentially criminal conduct of General Michael Flynn, the former national-security adviser, who was forced to resign after lying about conversations with the Russian Ambassador. In her Georgia lilt, Yates explained that she had repeatedly warned the White House about Flynn, contradicting the Trump Administration’s story. She recalled that she told the White House counsel, Don McGahn, that “the national-security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.”
Yates faced nine senators, eight of them men, who at times lectured her about her responsibilities.
“Are you familiar with 8 U.S.C. Section 1182?” Senator Ted Cruz asked.
“Not off the top of my head, no,” Yates replied.
“It is the binding statutory authority for the executive order that you refused to implement, and that led to your termination. So it—it certainly is a relevant and not a terribly obscure statute.”
Cruz read a portion of the law, which vested the President with the authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants,” and gave a self-satisfied grin.
“I am familiar with that,” Yates told Cruz. “And I’m also familiar with an additional provision of the I.N.A.”—the Immigration and Nationality Act—“that says no person shall receive preference or be discriminated against an issuance of a visa because of race, nationality, or place of birth, that I believe was promulgated after the statute that you just quoted.” She added that, beyond the text of the statute, she had to judge whether Trump’s executive order was in violation of the Constitution.
The video clip of Yates’s retort became a social-media sensation. During the subsequent round of questioning, Cruz was conspicuously absent.
www.newyorker.com/...
Charles Pierce’s May 8, 2017 piece in Esquire entitled “Sally Yates Dismantled Ted Cruz and Michael Flynn Seems Like a Hooked Fish” highlights the riveting testimony where, in her soft Georgia lilt, Yates dismantles Cruz and the other GOP Senators who made the misake of underestimating their witness, whom Pierce exquisitely describes in his Esquire piece as “the nice lady with the backbone of steel.” www.esquire.com/…
It is not often that you see one woman demolish a state's entire delegation to the United States Senate, but Sally Yates did the Republic a great service on Monday afternoon by demonstrating that Texas has sent to Washington a remarkable pair of deuces. First, she slapped John Cornyn silly as regards her refusal to enforce the president*'s original travel ban, the issue over which she'd been fired. He pronounced himself disappointed, and she handed him his head. Via The Washington Post:
CORNYN: Well, Ms. Yates, you had a distinguished career for 27 years at the Department of Justice and I voted for your confirmation because I believed that you had a distinguished career. But I have to tell you that I find it enormously disappointing that you somehow vetoed the decision of the Office of Legal Counsel with regard to the lawfulness of the president's order and decided instead that you would counter man (ph) the executive order of the president of the United States because you happen to disagree with it as a policy matter.
YATES: Well, it was...
CORNYN: I just have to say that.
YATES: I appreciate that, Senator, and let me make one thing clear. It is not purely as a policy matter. In fact, I'll remember my confirmation hearing. In an exchange that I had with you and others of your colleagues where you specifically asked me in that hearing that if the president asked me to do something that was unlawful or unconstitutional and one of your colleagues said or even just that would reflect poorly on the Department of Justice, would I say no? And I looked at this, I made a determination that I believed that it was unlawful. I also thought that it was inconsistent with principles of the Department of Justice and I said no. And that's what I promised you I would do and that's what I did.
That was merely the appetizer. Yates, in her calm and judicious way, proceeded to make the entrée Tailgunner Ted Cruz, who started out in his customary cloud of oily arrogance and ended up being sautéed by the nice lady with the backbone of steel.
www.esquire.com/…
Sally Yates, previously largely unknown outside legal circles, “became a hero to the Trump opposition” receiving hundreds of letters of thanks. [ I am parahrasing from the Lizza piece, to which I owe many of these facts, trying not to quote too extensively. The article is sufficiently lengthy that I assume the snippets below are still within fair use.]
Born Sally Caroline Quillian in Atlanta in 1960, her family included numerous lawyers, judges, and Methodist ministers. Law was the expected course, but Yates initially wasn’t inclined to the profession even though her paternal grandmother was one of the first women to be admitted to the Georgia bar, in 1934:
At that time in the South, it was unheard of for women to practice law, so she worked as her husband’s legal secretary and then played a similar role for her two sons. Yates was impressed by her willingness to speak out. “Mama, as we called her, was not one to hold back her opinion on things,” she said. www.newyorker.com/...
Yates studied journalism at the University of Georgia, confiding in Lizza that when she graduated the last thing she wanted was “to be a lawyer, marry a lawyer, or have a lot of lawyer friends. “ She spent a summer in Washington D.C. interning for Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia, later moving to Washington to work as a staff assistant for conservative Democratic Representative Jack Brinkley. As Lizza recounts
The experience helped change her mind about studying law. “I loved the process of being in the center, where it felt like the important decisions are being made about our country,” she said.
www.newyorker.com/...
After working for Brinkley, Yates attended the University of Georgia School of Law, receiving a full scholarship and graduating in 1986. That year, her father, who had long suffered from depression, committed suicide. Yates told me, “Tragically, the fear of stigma then associated with depression prevented him from getting the treatment he needed.” www.newyorker.com/...
After law school, Yates spent three years in private practice at King & Spalding, a prestigious Atlanta firm founded in 1885. The firm was run by Griffin Bell, Jimmy Carter’s Attorney General and a family friend, who became her mentor. Yates described why she admired Bell:
“He had a strong moral compass,” she told [Lizza]. “He was very clear about keeping the Justice Department separate from other parts of government, particularly the White House.”
www.newyorker.com/...
Yates did not find private practice to her taste, although she was inspired by one case she was given to take to trial before a jury.
That jury left a deep impression on Yates. “They were so proud of what they were doing, because they were taking really seriously their oath and their obligation to uphold the law and to apply the law to the facts,” she said. “I still have the image of them coming back in. I was just ready to throw up, I was so nervous at that point.” www.newyorker.com/...
[Note: As of the date of this diary Yates is again at King & Spalding, as a partner specializing in Special Matters and Government Investigatations. www.kslaw.com/...]
Soon afterward, her mentor Griffin Bell encouraged her to join the Justice Department. She was hired as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) for the Northern District of Georgia in 1989 by then U.S. Attorney Bill Barr, later an arch anti-Clinton Conservative Republican Congressman. As an AUSA, Yates went on to prosecute a number of hgih profile corruption cases, including some Democrats.
One, in 1994, implicated some of Atlanta’s most prominent officials, including Ira Jackson, its first black city councilman, in a corruption scheme at Hartsfield International Airport. Douglas A. Blackmon, who covered the case for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and has known Yates for decades, recalled, “She was facing off in this gigantic corruption trial not just against the city’s most powerful figures but against a dream team of the highest-paid criminal-defense attorneys in Atlanta.” Yates won the case, sending Jackson to prison, along with the brother-in-law of a federal judge. “That was awkward,” she told me. The judge was a close friend. www.newyorker.com/...
Her most famous trial involved the Atlanta Olympics bomber, where she had to make split second decisions about whether or not to make a deal that might save numerous innocent lives but would take the death penalty off the table. Lizza’s article details that case, which would make a riveting movie. www.newyorker.com/...
In 2009, President Obama wanted to tap her for the position of U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, but her record of prosecuting local Democrats (for corruption) caused some concern. Famed civil rights icon and Georgia Representative John Lewis told Lizza:
“The four African-American members, and three of the members in particular, that made up the delegation at the time had raised some concerns, and part of it had to do with her prosecution of the former mayor of the city of Atlanta, Bill Campbell.” Yates said that she heard about these concerns, and, after running into Lewis on a flight, she asked him for a meeting. Afterward, Lewis said, “I threw all of my support behind her.” The Senate voted unanimously for her confirmation.
“Why Sally Yates Stood Up to Trump” — www.newyorker.com/...
As a U.S. Attorney, Yates drew praise for prosecuting white-collar crimes, including Ponzi schemes and the maker of Botox for making fraudulent medical claims. She also went after an international hacking ring that stole millions from ATMs in a 12-hour crime spree.
In September 2014, President Obama nominated Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, to replace a departing Eric Holder, and Yates as Deputy Attorney General. While Lynch was being grilled in confirmation hearings, Yates became Acting Deputy Attorney General under Holder. This passage from Yates’ confirmation hearing has been widely shared, but bears repeating:
At the hearing to officially confirm her for the position, in March, 2015, Republicans, including Jeff Sessions, asked her whether she would stand up to President Obama if he defied the law. “They were all over me about ‘Look, you’ve got to be independent. You don’t work for the President,’ ” Yates said. “They’re absolutely right. You’ve got to be able to say no to the President. You’ve got to make your own decisions about what’s lawful and constitutional.”
The vote on Yates was 84–12. One of the “No” votes was from Sessions, whom Trump chose to lead his Justice Department. www.newyorker.com/...
With Holder gone, Obama relied on Yates to lead the efforts to reform the criminal justice system. She had impressed Obama after a meeting in the White House and he continued to seek her input even after Holder left DOJ.
Yates’ legal and political skills included an understanding of how to frame the issue to win the point while building consensus.
Some career prosecutors were skeptical of the reform efforts, including the Smart on Crime program, which Holder started in 2013, and which urged prosecutors to allocate fewer resources for low-level convictions. Lynch recalled, “Many senior Assistant U.S. Attorneys initially said, ‘What is this? Are you saying that I was doing something wrong for doing my job before?’ ” Cecilia Muñoz, the director of Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council, told me that Yates successfully reframed the issue: “She argued there is something to be gained by actually focussing your resources where they are going to make the biggest difference if we have better sentencing policy.” www.newyorker.com/...
Increasingly during his last two years in office, Obama turned to Yates rather than Lynch for help in getting numerous issues resolved, including the thousands of commutations as well as other politically difficult issues.
During Obama’s final two years in office, he intended to work through an enormous backlog of commutation requests, and Yates was his primary contact. Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s senior adviser, told me, “He looked to Sally to do that last review before the recommendations were sent over to the White House counsel.” Yates spent hours on the phone with Obama, who eventually commuted more than a thousand sentences.
Several Obama Administration officials said that, by the end of Obama’s second term, Yates was effectively running the Justice Department. A former senior Justice official said, “A lot of people by default looked to Sally and to her folks if you needed to get a decision made.” Another senior Obama Administration official said, of Yates, “The reality was that the President saw her as more committed and more effective to his agenda than he did Loretta. That’s just a fact.”
www.newyorker.com/..
This diary is unavoidably lengthy and yet still omits so much of the part Yates has played in our receent history. I will when I can post additional diaries focusing on why I feel she is the best candidate, despite an already crowded field with many excellent choices.
Policies and Positions
Subsequent diaries will look into possible policy positions and possible running mates, as well as comparing her strengths and weaknesses to those of the other candidates. At this point, I have no idea what her positions are on Medicare for All or raising the minimum wage or the other “progressive” agenda items (all of which I support). To me, those agenda items are dwarfed in importance by the need to restore the basic Constitutional foundation of our crumbling democracy.
Before anything else, we must restore public confidence in the concept of government as providing valuable services for the people, instead of a trough for the rich. We must repair the destruction to the concept of three co-equal branches, protect our judiciary against political influence, eliminate the money and influence that have corrupted our institutions almost beyond repair, restore and expand voting rights to ensure equal access and equal justice for all. Equal rights and equal justice for all.
Speaker Pelosi has signaled her understanding of the importance of these issues by passing HR-1 as her first legislative prioroity upon retaking the House. Getting HR-1 enacted and signed by the new President is the critical first step in what will be an extraordinarily challenging task, as the corruption in our system is pervasive and runs deep, not just on one side of the aisle but wherever power and money intersect. Yates’ first actions as president would be to ensure passage of HR 1 through a possibly still GOP controlled Senate. [Personally I’d love to see Stacey Abrams as her VP pick, to lead the effort to restore and expand voting rights and eliminate corruption and fraud. But possible VP picks are for another diary.]
Focusing on restoring democracy and providing equal justice and equal rights to all as our national Democratic slogan doesn’t mean the local candidates can’t tailor their messages to suit their particular districts or states, red or blue. Blue state candidates might be successful focusing on expanding Medicare and fighting climate change with a Green New Deal; red state candidates might be more successful focusing on kitchen table economic fairness issues and less ambitious progressive proposals. That’s for the state and local candidates and the Party to determine.
But the national Democratic message must be something that unites red and blue state voters behind one common purpose. Retoring democracy and the rule of law isn’t a partisan issue except for those currently in power who are the beneficiaries of that corruption. Yates’ willingness and history of holding everyone — even the powerful — to account regardless of party or politics is one of her greatest strengths. A “strong moral compass” similar to what she admired in her mentor, AG Bell. “Equal Rights and Equal Justice Under the Law” is just a suggestion. Maybe “Equal Rights for All” or something that indicates that in this country no one is above the law, and everyone should have equal rights and opportunity. We don’t want to frame our aspirations as “equal rights for women” or “blacks” or “LGBTQ” or any other “identity group,” because that framing assumes that the white male is the standard of equality to which we aspire, and it also excludes the white male from the equality we seek. Framing the slogan as “EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL” or “EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL” includes white males in the equation, which is far better framing.
Sally Yates is uniquely suited for the task at hand, for this moment in our nation’s history.The times are too perilous. The stakes are too great. Her history . . both before Trump and with this adminstration gives her a unique insight into exactly how the government institutions were constituted in the moments before Trump took office, which makes her uniquely suited to root out and defuse all the “explosive devices” that this administration has placed in every department and organization throughout all branches of government.
Does anyone still believe Trump will make any transition from power easy? Michael Cohen only voiced what many of us have feared. Yates’ knowledge and experience from almost thirty years at DOJ, especially as Deputy AG and Acting AG at the very moment Trump took office and started his destruction derby presidency, give her unrivaled knowledge of how to engineer a peaceful transition of power by using every tool in our judicial and enforcement aresenal. No other candidate comes close.
Her previous experience and willingness to prosecute high level corruption assuages the fears many of us have that a new President may follow the “politically” expedient path both Ford and Obama unfortunately followed, which was failing to hold predecessors accountable (for whatever reason) for what were gross abuses of power . My hope is that Yates will not folllow in their footsteps, and will make sure all who are corrupt are held to account.
Yates’ history with Trump from her encounters with him also gives her an insight and advantage none of the other candidates share. She knows how he is up close and personal, not just in his lunatic public appearances but in his angriest private moments. She didn’t flinch then. She won’t flinch now regardless of his insults and petty tyrannies. Trump’s biggest lackeys in Congress (Nunes, Graham, Cruz, etc.) have experienced first hand what it feels like “being sautéed by the nice lady with the backbone of steel” as Charles Pierce so neatly phrased it. [www.esquire.com/…] They fear her, and have yet to uncover any weaknesses despite hours cross examining her under oath and in the spotlight. They won’t be as quick to be Trump’s attack dogs in 2020 against Yates as they will be against any of the other candidates.
Yates is not yet a household name, but she is absolutely a known quantity. We know her ethics. We know her courage. We know her strength and her resolve. She had everything to lose in 2016, and did the right thing without hesitation. She has nothing to lose now. We have everything to lose if we don’t win 2020.
Here’s one last quote showing why she would be a winning candidate, and also why I trust she will answer the call if we make it loud enough.
“The White House is not supposed to be involved in any investigations of the Department of Justice, which includes the F.B.I., and certainly not any investigations that involved the campaign of the President.” . . . “That’s just not who we are—or who we were, I guess.”
The next day, the Times reported that, hours after Yates’s second meeting with McGahn, Trump had dinner with Comey and asked the F.B.I. director to pledge his loyalty to him. Comey refused.
. . .
Yates has been following these developments from Georgia, where Democrats have been trying to recruit her to run for governor in 2018. Yates told me, “I am totally ruling out the governor’s race.” But she also said that she wants to find another role in public life. “I recognize that I may have a voice that I didn’t have before, and part of what I want to be able to do is to figure out how I can responsibly use that voice in a way to impact things that I think really matter,” she said.
Yates remained at the Department of Justice for almost three decades because she thought that she was making a difference. “I know all of this sounds so holier-than-thou and corny and all of that, but that’s the case,” she said. “I want to find something—I just don’t know what that’s going to be.
www.newyorker.com/… [emphasis added by diarist]
Thank you for reading this lengthy piece. This diary has been sitting in rudimentary draft form for months. I undertake this effort because the 2020 election is existential for our nation. If we lose in 2020 our democracy will be beyond repair as we slide further into autocracy and oligarchy.
We have an excellent slate of candidates. I will support whoever is the nominee. But I am blown away by Sally Yates’ potential not only to beat Trump, but to quickly unite all Democrats, even those who first supported other nominees, as well as draw disaffected Republicans who still believe in the Constitution and the rule of law, and might vote with Democrats to restore democratic institutions even as they disagree with Democrats on economic or social issues. State and local Democratic candidates would still tailor their message for their Districts or States, whether red or blue. With Yates as our standard bearer, I see a unified Party, and a wave election that gives us not only the White House but the Senate and House. HR-1 will be the first order of business. Once HR-1 passes the Senate and is signed by President Yates, we must start the challenging task of cleansing our corrupted institutions and agencies to make good on the promise of our country’s ideals of tolerance, inclusivity and diversity. Trump is a sympton of the cancer in our body politic. The dis-ease is far more systemic and has been ignored for too long. We need a President with a “strong moral compass” who will fight without faltering to eliminate corruption and create a country where each person enjoys . . .
“Equal Rights and Equal Justice Under the Law”