Yates—a political unknown before her firing—and her soft Georgia drawl were the stars of the show. (Clapper, a veteran of many testy exchanges with congressional panels, said at the outset that he’d thought he was done with such testimony when he left the government, and he made little attempt to conceal his displeasure at being there for the remainder of the hearing.)

Flynn, who is beset by a range of ethical questions, reportedly spoke with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak on December 29, discussing newly imposed U.S. sanctions on Russia, but Flynn told Pence and others he had not discussed the sanctions. On January 24, the FBI interviewed Flynn.

Yates testified that on January 26, having been briefed on the FBI interview, she called White House Counsel Don McGahn and asked for a meeting with him. Later that day, she and another career Justice Department lawyer met McGahn, and she informed him that DOJ knew that Flynn’s public accounts were untrue. She said she offered that information so that the White House could act as it saw fit, and did not advise on whether Flynn should be fired. McGahn asked how Flynn had done in his interview, she said, but Yates declined to say.

The following day, January 27, McGahn met with Yates again. She said he had four questions. First, he was curious why the Justice Department cared, as a matter of law, whether one White House official lied to another.

“Importantly, every time this lie was repeated, and the misrepresentations were getting more and more specific, every time that happened, it increased the compromise,” Yates said. “To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians.”

Yates said McGahn also wanted to know whether Flynn was likely to face criminal charges for misleading (she would not say Monday); whether any White House action would interfere with an FBI investigation (no, she said); and whether he could view the underlying evidence. Yates said she next spoke with McGahn on January 30, informing him that they’d set up a way for McGahn to review the evidence at the Justice Department. But that afternoon, Yates announced that she she would not defend the travel ban, on which she had not been consulted. By that night, Yates had been fired.

But Yates’s account, while the most complete to date, left many questions still unanswered. Two pieces of intelligence jargon have become central to the debate over Russian interference, “incidental collection” and “unmasking.” The former is when Americans are caught up in surveillance of lawful foreign targets. In those cases, their names and identifying information is supposed to be redacted, or masked. But some intelligence officials can ask to have their names included, or “unmasked,” if they believe it is relevant to understanding the intelligence.