by a veteran espionage prosecutor. two, the white house knew that during the transition and they hired him to be national security advisor anyway. but the other reason that was stunning is because the federal prosecutor whose office convened that grand jury, the guy whose office that investigation was being run out of, the guy signing the subpoenas, was dana boente, this same guy who trump had made the acting attorney general of the united states after he fired sally yates. and in fact boente went through a whole string of jobs in the first months of the trump administration. it s important now, i think, to recognize that at every step of the way he had a key role in the russia investigation. i mean the first thing that was unusual about the way trump treated dana boente is that he kept dana boente on as the u.s. attorney in the eastern district
news tonight. this is one of those days when it sort of feels like all of washington is on egg shells and something is about to crack and fail. but in the middle of all that, i would like to pile on something new, because we do have a little bit of a scoop tonight. okay. this is dana boente. dana boente, first became a public official of national interest when president trump fired sally yates. sally yates was the acting attorney general of the united states. she was fired after she told the white house that she believed trump s muslim ban was likely unconstitutional. that s the reason she was fired. but we soon learned that while she had been acting attorney general, she had personally gone to the white house to give the white house a warning about national security advisor mike flynn and his communications with the russian government, which he had been lying about. and this all happened very quickly, at the very start of the trump administration. trump got sworn in on friday, january
the following tuesday, january 24th. on thursday the 26th sally yates was up at the white house giving them that warning about flynn. then she got called back the next day, asked to come back to the white house to discuss that warning further. that was friday, the 27th. then there was the weekend and then on monday she was fired, january 30th. it all happened very quickly. the whole first ten days of the trump administration. she was out, she was fired even before flynn was. one of the enduring mysteries about the russia investigation and this president and this white house is that even after these totally unprecedented warnings from the justice department with the acting attorney general coming to the white house in person to deliver this unprecedented warning about the national security advisor being compromised by a foreign power, even after that warning and then subsequent warnings the next day, they kept that guy on for another 18 days. they didn t fire flynn until mid-february.
an enduring mystery that has yet to be explained. well, a few weeks after they finally did fire flynn, in may of 2017, we found out in the new york times that the white house had actually had way more warning about flynn than just that heads up they got in person from sally yates. the new york times was first to report in may of last year that flynn had actually warned the white house during the transition that he was under federal investigation. i still remember reading this dramatic headline for the first time. trump team knew flynn was under investigation before he came to the white house. they did? michael t. flynn told president trump s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation. despite this warning, mr. trump made flynn his national security advisor anyway. this article in the times in may of last year, this is where we first learned that federal prosecutors, in fact a veteran