In our current hyper-partisan, non-stop 24-hour news cycle it has understandably become difficult to see the forest for the trees.

Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say this is one of the moments that we’ll likely look back on as a significant turning point in the sequence of events that led to wherever these investigations into Michael Flynn and Russia are going.

On Monday, May 8th, former acting attorney general Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism.

Yates’ testimony in particular revealed new details and raised new questions about how the Trump Administration handled the knowledge that Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, violated the Logan Act by discussing U.S. sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December prior to Trump taking office.

Yates said that in January when she saw Vice President Pence and other administration officials publicly denying that Flynn had discussed sanctions Kislyak, she went straight to White House lawyer Don McGahn to tell him she had intelligence showing otherwise.

She said McGahn asked why it mattered to her Justice Department if one official lied to another, and she replied that it was because Russia could blackmail Flynn, the President’s national security advisor, with knowledge of the lie he had told.

“To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians,” Yates explained.

McGahn then asked if the Justice Department would be investigating, and the Trump Administration proceeded to do nothing with the knowledge that Flynn had lied and could be compromised by Russia until the Washington Post reported in February that Flynn discussed sanctions during his phone call with the Russian ambassador.

The news led to Flynn’s prompt exit from the White House just weeks after Trump took office, although as I noted at the time some difficult questions still lingered — questions which are now resurfacing in light of new information.

Flynn, Putin, and 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein at a 2015 dinner Flynn was paid to attend.

Another notable development is the news that the inspector general of the Department of Defense has been investigating Flynn over payments he failed to disclose from foreign sources, including $45,000 from RT — a Kremlin backed propaganda outlet — to appear at a dinner with President Putin in 2015.

At her testimony, Yates said that she didn’t know what the White House did or didn’t do with the information she provided them regarding Flynn. That may have had something to do with the fact that she was fired by President Trump not long after for instructing the Justice Department not to defend his Muslim ban.