Sally Yates, a former acting attorney general early in Donald Trump’s administration, said voters “have a right” to hear the special counsel’s evidence against the former president before they head to the ballot box in 2024.
“The people of this country have a right to hear that evidence and to know the truth before they cast their vote and to do everything reasonably possible to be able to accomplish that,” Yates, who also served as deputy attorney general in the Obama administration, told CNN’s David Axelrod on “The Axe Files” podcast released Thursday.
Trump fired Yates in 2017 after she directed Justice Department lawyers not to make legal arguments defending his executive order that barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days. She was set to serve until Trump’s pick for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, could be confirmed.
The new comments from the longtime Justice Department official come as Trump faces a total of 91 state and federal criminal charges across four different cases.
As part of special counsel Jack Smith’s federal investigation into alleged 2020 election interference, the former president was charged in early August with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Those are in addition to a total of 40 counts in a separate federal indictment related to the special counsel’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.
Yates, who served in the DOJ for nearly three decades, called Smith “a talented, no-nonsense guy” and praised the strength of his team’s cases against Trump.
“They appear to be really strong cases. You know, on the documents case in Florida, let’s put aside for the moment the…
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