Yates reveals why she defied Trump’s immigration order

In her first media interviews since she was fired as acting U.S. Attorney General, Sally Quillian Yates discussed the controversial decisions that put her in the national glare and shed light on her future plans.

The Atlanta native ruled out a run for Georgia governor in 2018. She warned that Donald Trump’s former top security adviser could have risked blackmail because of his ties to Russia. And she stood by her decision to defy the president’s executive order on immigration.

The revelations took place in a pair of sit-downs, one with CNN's Anderson Cooper and the other with Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. She has declined repeated requests for interviews by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The former U.S. Attorney in Atlanta, Yates became a symbol of the resistance to Trump’s presidency when she was fired for refusing to defend his executive order that closed the U.S. to refugees and restricted travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Liberals have celebrated Yates as a new hero and encouraged her to run for Georgia's open governor seat in 2018. Conservatives condemn her as a grandstanding hack out to raise her profile by defying a sitting president's order.

Her testimony last week before a U.S. Senate judiciary committee only heightened the debate.

She testified that Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, had engaged conduct that was “problematic” and that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian officials.

In the pair of interviews published Tuesday, she elaborated on her short-lived tenure at length.

She told CNN that Flynn was in a "serious compromise situation" and that Russians had "real leverage" over him. She also said there was "certainly a criminal statute" he could have violated by misleading Pence about his ties to Russia's ambassador.

And in the New Yorker interview, she quipped that she expected her tenure at the top of the Justice Department to be an "uneventful few weeks" as she waited for the U.S. Senate to confirm Jeff Sessions, who is now the U.S. Attorney General.

It turned out it was anything but that.

‘An obligation’

Yates didn’t learn about Trump’s immigration executive order – now tied up in the legal system – until it was made public. She told The New Yorker she headed to the airport for a return flight to Atlanta when a deputy called with the news.

“I had been sitting in Don McGahn’s office an hour before to talk about the Flynn issue,” she said of the White House counsel, “and he didn’t tell me.”

She flirted with resigning rather than carry out an order she believed to be unconstitutional, but she told Lizza she decided against it because "I believed and I still think that I had an obligation to also protect the integrity of the Department of Justice."

Her thoughts immediately flickered to segregation-era legislation aimed to disenfranchise black voters.

"Those didn't say that the purpose was to prevent African-Americans from voting," she said in The New Yorker interview. "But that's what their purpose was."

At the same time, she was wrestling with the White House over Flynn's contacts with Russia. She told CNN that Flynn's discussions with Russian officials made him a blackmail target, but declined to say whether it was a fireable offense.

"Whether he is fired or not is a decision by the president of the United States to make," she said in the CNN interview, "but it doesn't seem like that's a person who should be sitting in the national security adviser position."

'I am not running'

Yates did not say exactly what she will do next – but she made clear, unequivocally, she will not run for governor in 2018. Several leading Georgia Democrats, including Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, had long tried to recruit her. And many Republicans quietly worried that she would be difficult to beat.

“I am totally ruling out the governor’s race. I am not running for governor,” she told The New Yorker.

Her decision comes as little surprise, largely because she didn’t drop a single bread crumb about a gubernatorial run over the last few months.

It’s a relief to two other Democrats circling the race. House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams has already filed paperwork to run, and state Rep. Stacey Evans is said to be seriously considering a race. A trio of Republicans – Casey Cagle, Hunter Hill and Brian Kemp – are also in the race, and more could soon join.

Still, Yates left the door open for an electoral bid down the road, saying she wants to “give something more back.”

Among the possible vacancies: U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s seat in 2020. Yates might also decide to make a gubernatorial bid two years later if a Republican wins the race next year to succeed a term-limited Nathan Deal.

“I recognize that I may have a voice that I didn’t have before,” she said in The New Yorker interview. “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. I just don’t know what form that takes.”