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Sally Q. Yates, Deputy U. S. Attorney General is in the middle of “Emailgate,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
Yates has over 25 years as a federal prosecutor. Her role in the investigation came to light over the weekend. It follows an acknowledgment from Attorney General Loretta Lynch that she will defer to the recommendations of the investigators and attorneys.
Yates is one of two female attorneys involved in the Justice Department investigation into whether the presumptive Democratic nominee broke any federal laws in the handling of State Department communiques.
Before Yates was confirmed by the Senate last year, she had been the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. She worked as an Assistant United States Attorney before President Barack Obama placed her in charge of criminal prosecutions in the Northern District.
In her capacity as a federal prosecutor in Georgia, Yates successfully prosecuted Eric Rudolph, the Olympic bomber.
According to the Department of Justice website, from 1994 to 2002 Yates served as “Chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption Section of the office where she supervised the prosecution of all of the office’s white collar cases.”
She specialized in prosecuting public corruption cases before coming to the Department of Justice. Her prosecutorial reputation was made on the public demise of high ranking public officials in the metropolitan Atlanta region. As the lead federal prosecutor, Yates took down former Dekalb County Sheriff Pat Jarvis, who also was a former pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, former Fulton County Commissioner Michael Hightower and former Atlanta Civil Service Board Chair Fred Prewitt.
Her most high profile case involving a public official, however, was the prosecution of former Atlanta Mayor, William “Bill” Campbell. As acting U. S. Attorney, Yates secured an indictment against Campbell for racketeering, bribery and fraud. Campbell beat the rap on all three charges, but felt the effect of the”Al Capone Rule.” He was convicted of failure to pay taxes on illegally received money.
As an affable Atlanta City Councilman, Campbell was hand-picked to run for mayor by the city’s first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson. Also, he was blessed by the city’s second Black mayor, Andrew Young. Campbell, the city’s third Black mayor, had a bright future and before the federal government started investigating him, he was rumored to be in line for a cabinet post in the Bill Clinton administration.
Campbell contended he was innocent and called the federal investigation into every aspect of his “personal and private life ‘forces of evil’ motivated by racism.”
According to a September 2005 article in Atlanta Magazine, Yate’s husband Comer Yates, a local attorney in 1996 (today Comer Yates is a school teacher), “reportedly asked for Campbell’s support in a 1996 congressional race. Campbell instead supported Cynthia McKinney, who won. Political analysts say Campbell’s support was a deciding factor in the outcome of the race.”
This becomes an interesting factor because of the political intrigue involved in the ethically challenged meeting in Arizona last week between Yates’ boss and former President Bill Clinton , the spouse of the subject of the email investigation.
Yates seldom brings attention to herself and is known to be smart and tough to deal with in a courtroom. An interesting confluence of history has placed her square in the middle of Hillary Clinton’s “Emailgate” and her quest to become the first woman president of the United States.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist, the author of Paper puzzle and Justice in the Round. He can be contacted at haroldmichaelharvey.com.
SOURCES:
https://www.justice.gov/dag/meet-deputy-attorney-general