33 Facts About Sally Yates

Rather than defend it, Sally Yates stated the order was neither defensible in court nor consistent with the Constitution.

Sally Yates was considered a candidate for Attorney General in the Biden administration.

Sally Yates was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to John Kelley Quillian, an attorney and judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals between 1966 and 1984, and his wife, Xara "Mickey" DeBeaugrine Quillian, an interior designer.

Sally Yates's grandmother had been one of the first women admitted to the Georgia Bar; however, she was not hired as an attorney, instead working as a legal secretary for Yates's grandfather.

Sally Yates went to Dunwoody High School and attended the University of Georgia, receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1982.

In 1986, Sally Yates was admitted to the State Bar of Georgia.

In 1989, Sally Yates was hired as Assistant US Attorney by Bob Barr for the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia.

Early in her career at the Department of Justice, Sally Yates prosecuted a variety of types of cases including white-collar fraud and political corruption.

Sally Yates was the lead prosecutor in the case of Eric Rudolph, who committed the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, a terrorist convicted for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed two people and injured over 120 others.

Sally Yates rose to First Assistant US Attorney in 2002 and to Acting US Attorney in 2004.

President Barack Obama nominated Sally Yates to be US Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia.

Sally Yates was confirmed by the Senate on March 10,2010.

Sally Yates was the first woman to hold that position in the Northern District of Georgia.

Sally Yates served under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who took office shortly before Yates's confirmation.

In 2015, she authored the policy, known as the "Sally Yates memo", prioritizing the prosecution of executives for corporate crimes.

In January 2017, according to a Justice Department spokesman, Sally Yates accepted a request from the incoming Trump administration to be acting Attorney General, beginning on January 20,2017, and until the successor for Attorney General Lynch would be confirmed by the Senate.

In subsequent days of the new presidency, Sally Yates warned the Trump administration that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had not been truthful about his contacts with Russia related to sanctions and that he was vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence.

Sally Yates' warning was not immediately acted upon until it was leaked by a senior United States government official who unmasked Flynn during the last days of Obama administration to The Washington Post, which publicly reported her warning on February 13,2017.

Sally Yates's decision came after several federal courts had issued stays on various parts of the order to stop their implementation, and many US Customs and Border Protection agents had acted in defiance of those stays.

Some legal experts argued that Sally Yates should have resigned, rather than directing the Justice Department not to defend the executive order, which Cato Institute scholar Josh Blackman called "a textbook case of insubordination".

Law professor Jonathan Adler said that "Sally Yates did not claim she was convinced the order was unlawful, but only that it was not 'wise or just'" and that he was "not aware of any instance in which the Justice Department has refused to defend a presumptively lawful executive action on this basis".

The editors of National Review said her defiance of the executive order was "inappropriate", since Sally Yates was unelected and "every official in the Justice Department knows, if one disagrees with the law one is called upon to apply, or the policy one is bound to enforce, one is free to resign".

Democratic Party operatives in Georgia began recruiting Sally Yates to run for Governor of Georgia in the 2018 election.

In March 2017, Sally Yates was invited by the House Intelligence Committee to testify before Congress at a public hearing as part of the committee's "bipartisan, ongoing investigation into the Russian active measures campaign targeting the 2016 US election".

Later the same month The Washington Post published documents indicating that the Trump administration had sought to block her from testifying, including letters from the Justice Department to Sally Yates indicating that the administration considers her possible testimony on the ouster of Flynn to be barred by the presidential communications privilege or deliberative process privilege.

The public hearing at which Sally Yates had been set to testify was canceled by Chairman Devin Nunes, who said through his spokesperson that neither he nor anyone else in the committee had discussed Sally Yates's testimony with the White House.

Sally Yates informed McGahn that Flynn was "compromised" and possibly open to blackmail by the Russians.

Sally Yates delivered a speech as part of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

On September 5,2020, Sally Yates was announced to be a member of the advisory council of the Biden-Harris Transition Team responsible for planning the presidential transition of Joe Biden.

The USSF, the national governing body for the sport, indicated that Sally Yates would have "full autonomy" to pursue resolution of the allegations.

In January 2016, Sally Yates received Emory University School of Law's Emory Public Interest Committee Inspiration Award.

Sally Yates was hired by Republican Bob Barr for her first DOJ position.

Sally Yates has written and spoken about suicide prevention, discussing her father's struggles with depression and his suicide in 1986.