In countless tweets, Trump has accused former President Barack Obama of "spying" on him and his associates both during and after the election. It's the greatest scandal in American history, worse than Watergate, et cetera, et cetera! But Yates pointed out that neither Trump nor any of his aides was ever wiretapped or surveilled. Instead, the Justice Department was conducting a counterintelligence operation that targeted Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

That was how the FBI discovered and recorded Flynn's perfidious contacts with the Kremlin.

What Yates and her fellow prosecutors learned from those recordings was that the former general (once famously entertained by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself) had undermined U.S. sanctions imposed after Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election. Those same recordings later showed that Flynn had deceived Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia. She testified that the probe continued because of the revelations about Flynn's subversion.

There was no attempt by the Obama administration -- including then-Vice President Joe Biden -- to direct the investigation to harm Trump or his incoming administration, she said. There was no effort to interfere with Trump's campaign using a falsified intelligence warrant. Such claims barely merit discussion, since it was Hillary Clinton's campaign, not Donald Trump's, that was undone by the public revelations about an FBI investigation.

Having established the basic facts, Yates bluntly rebuked the machinations by Attorney General William Barr to protect Flynn from the consequences of his acts -- which have enraged and embarrassed nearly every lawyer who ever served the United States. She contradicted Barr's weak claims exonerating Flynn of lying to the FBI, which the attorney general used to dismiss his guilty plea. And Yates didn't hesitate to point out the terrible consequences for the integrity of the justice system when the highest law enforcement officer uses his power to rescue the president's guilty accomplices.