# Sally Yates Acting Attorney General of the United States (January 20 – January 30, 2017), career DOJ official since 1989. Yates was fired by [[Donald Trump]] after 10 days in office — once for refusing to enforce the travel ban, but her most consequential act was warning the White House that National Security Adviser [[Michael Flynn]] was compromised. ## The Flynn Warning On January 26, 2017, Yates went to the White House to deliver an urgent warning: Flynn had misrepresented the content of his December 2016 phone calls with Russian Ambassador [[Sergey Kislyak]]. Flynn had told [[Vice President Pence]] and other officials that he had not discussed sanctions with Kislyak. Intelligence intercepts showed he had. Yates warned White House Counsel [[Don McGahn]] that this created a vulnerability: **"The Russians knew what was said. Flynn had lied about it, which gave [[Russia]] leverage over the National Security Adviser."** In intelligence terms, Flynn was compromised — a foreign adversary had information they could use to blackmail a senior US official. [[The White House]] took **no action for 18 days.** Flynn continued in his role with full access to classified information. He was removed only after the Washington Post reported on Yates' warning, making public inaction politically untenable. ## Firing On January 30, 2017 — four days after her Flynn warning — Yates was fired. The official reason was her instruction to DOJ attorneys not to defend Trump's executive order banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, which she believed was unlawful. The timing, coming immediately after her Flynn warning, has been debated ever since. ## Significance Yates represents the institutional response to the Flynn compromise — a senior DOJ official who identified the national security risk and reported it through proper channels. The White House's 18-day inaction after her warning is one of the most significant data points in the obstruction pattern: why did Trump keep a compromised National Security Adviser in place, with full access to classified intelligence, after being told Russia had leverage over him?