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Here's a tip for you youngsters of the gaming persuasion. If a woman sits down at your table and tells you she's a lawyer who likes to relax with a little poker, and introduces herself as Sally Yates, run like hell and don't stop until you get to the Arctic Circle. It seems that the administration tried to block Ms. Yates from testifying to the House Intelligence Committee about what she knows concerning contact between departed White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and various Russian entities.

Ms. Yates, you will recall, was dismissed from her position as acting Attorney General for refusing to enforce the president*'s unconstitutional Muslim ban. From The Washington Post:

According to letters The Post reviewed, the Justice Department notified Yates earlier this month that the administration considers a great deal of her possible testimony to be barred from discussion in a congressional hearing because the topics are covered by the presidential communication privilege. Yates and other former intelligence officials had been asked to testify before the House Intelligence Committee this week, a hearing that was abruptly canceled by the panel's chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Yates was the deputy attorney general in the final years of the Obama administration, and served as the acting attorney general in the first days of the Trump administration.

Again, as I say, I'm no lawyer, although I occasionally perform the services of one here in the shebeen, but it seems to me that the administration at least has a little ground to stand on regarding executive privilege. Certainly, it seems to have enough to haul the whole matter into court to delay Yates' testimony.

So why did Nunes simply cancel the committee hearing instead? That's where Ms. Yates' poker skills come into play. As you can see from the correspondence, Yates and her legal team explained to the White House lawyers that they didn't accept that she was bound by any claim of privilege, and that she was going to testify anyway, damn the torpedoes. At which point, the White House, and its hapless Night Stalker Devin Nunes, folded like cheap suits and canceled the hearings entirely.

The administration really had no choice. They could let Yates testify, in which case anything could happen. Or they could go to court and stop her, and look even more like they're trying to bury what she knows. (Maybe they could have sent federal marshals into the committee room to stop her. That would've been great TV!) Or they could duck and let Nunes take this in the face, which is pretty much what they did, because it's always Someone Else's Fault with this bunch.

It's really time for Nunes to go back to the farm. He was hopelessly compromised even before his midnight jaunt to the Rose Garden or wherever on "the White House grounds" he was roaming before babbling into the microphones about how Barack Obama's mad ninja black-ops skillz were bedeviling the new president. Now, with the weekend's revelations, he's been rendered a clown as well as an incompetent. From CNN:

The request for recusal marks a critical split between Schiff and Nunes, who had worked closely on the House investigation into ties between top aides to the campaign of President Donald Trump and Russian officials. It comes just hours after CNN reported that Nunes visited the White House grounds one day before going to the President with evidence that his transition aides' communications were picked up in surveillance by US intelligence. "This is not a recommendation I make lightly, as the chairman and I have worked together well for several years; and I take this step with the knowledge of the solemn responsibility we have on the Intelligence Committee to provide oversight on all intelligence matters, not just to conduct the investigation," Schiff said Monday.

Somewhere out there is the independent counsel that we need to get to the bottom of this murk and mire. I hear Sally Yates might be looking for work.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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