Mueller Deputy Praised Yates for Refusing to Defend Travel Ban

(Bloomberg) -- A top prosecutor for Special Counsel Robert Mueller sent an email praising Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general fired by President Donald Trump, for refusing to defend Trump's travel ban.

Andrew Weissmann sent the email to Yates on the night of Jan. 30 offering support for her move after she told the Justice Department not to enforce Trump's executive order temporarily banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

“I am so proud,” Weissmann said in the subject line of the email released Tuesday by Judicial Watch, a conservative group that obtained it through a lawsuit. Weissmann wrote: “And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.”

The email was among 379 pages of Justice Department documents released by the group, including several others that praised Yates for her actions.

Mueller has come under political attack from Republican members of Congress and conservative commentators who claim his staff is politically biased as it investigates possible collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia last year. Mueller has charged four people, including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Four days before she was fired, Yates, an Obama appointee, warned the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, that Flynn was a security threat and had misled the vice president about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Voreacos in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey D Grocott at jgrocott2@bloomberg.net, David S. Joachim, Paul Cox

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