Sally Yates: Standing up to Donald Trump

Sally Q. Yates was Acting United States Attorney General until being dismissed by President Donald Trump, after she concluded that a proposed White House “travel ban” on citizens of certain predominantly Muslim countries was unconstitutional. Prior to serving as the Attorney General, she was Deputy U.S. Attorney General from 2015 to 2017, and the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta from 2010 to 2015. In her positions at the end of the administration of President Barack Obama and the beginning of the Trump presidency, Yates was a central figure in the Department of Justice/FBI investigations into efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election and potential conflicts of interest related to Gen. Michael Flynn, the first National Security Advisor in the Trump administration.

Born into a family of lawyers, she followed suit and took up education in the School of Law, University of Georgia. She was initially appointed as an Assistant U.S Attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia. Over the years, she rose through the ranks of the Department of Justice, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. As a federal prosecutor in Atlanta, she convicted nearly a dozen local officials in municipal corruptions schemes, including the former mayor the city; pioneered efforts to combat human trafficking and the sex trade; and led the prosecution and conviction of domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, for bomb attacks including at the 1996 Olympic Games. In Washington, she was instrumental in President Barack Obama’s ‘drug- clemency initiative,’ and authored the ‘Yates Memo’ related to corporate crime prosecutions.