Sally Yates, who spent 10 days running the Justice Department before Donald Trump fired her for having “betrayed” the agency, will address the graduates of Harvard Law School as this commencement’s class day speaker. Other recent class day speakers at Harvard Law have included actors Sarah Jessica Parker, Mindy Kaling, and Alec Baldwin, as well as more consequential public figures such as Eric Holder and Preet Bharara. (Bharara was also fired by Trump, a little more than a month after Yates.)
Yates had been working at DOJ for 27 years, including as the top deputy to attorneys general Holder and Loretta Lynch, when she was fired for declaring that the Justice Department would not defend Trump’s first travel ban in court as long as she was in charge. Trump’s revised travel ban, which attempted to address the original ban’s legal kinks, has still not been implemented on account of legal challenges to its validty.
Yates was in the news again this week due to the abrupt cancelation of her scheduled appearance before the House Intelligence Committee—a hearing during which she was expected to discuss her interactions with White House staff about improper contacts between General Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Letters between Yates’ lawyer and the DOJ, published this week by the Washington Post, suggested that the Trump administration may or may not have sought to constrain what Yates could tell the committee.
So far Yates’ testimony before the House Intelligence Committee has not been rescheduled. If it stays that way until May 24, maybe she could use this speaking gig to finally spill the beans.
