RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover, testified on Monday before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee in connection with the ongoing investigation into alleged Russian interference with last year’s presidential election. There were no major revelations during over three hours of testimony. The saga of General Michael Flynn, whom served briefly as President Trump’s national security adviser before being dismissed for misleading Trump administration officials about his Russian contacts, was a recurrent theme of the hearing. Another was the unmasking of the names of Trump associates on whom information was incidentally collected during the course of surveillance focused on foreign targets, and the leaks to the media that followed.

Both Mr. Clapper and Ms. Yates said they had viewed classified documents in which the identities of Donald Trump or his associates had been unmasked, but declined to provide any details. Ms. Yates indicated that she herself had not asked for any such unmasking. Mr. Clapper said that he had at least on one occasion requested unmasking involving a Trump associate. Both denied having leaked any such information to the press. Moreover, neither was aware of any classified information relating to Mr. Trump or his associates being declassified and then shared with the media.

Mr. Clapper reaffirmed his conclusion that no evidence existed of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. He also confirmed that during his investigation he did not find a situation where a Trump business interest in Russia gave him concern during the course of the preparation of the intelligence communities’ assessment.

Ms. Yates refused to state where she stood on the collusion issue in the public subcommittee setting, falling back on a justification she used repeatedly in not answering any questions that she claimed “would require me to reveal classified information.”

Despite getting no support from either Mr. Clapper or Ms. Yates on the existence of supposed collusion, Democrats on the subcommittee nevertheless kept hammering away on their speculative conspiracy theories without any evidence to support them. That is one reason why they kept coming back to the Flynn story, in an effort to draw broad but unsupportable inferences of something even more nefarious at work.

Ms. Yates claimed to have warned the White House, in particular White House Counsel Don McGahn, during the very early days of the Trump administration regarding Flynn’s misleading statements on his prior contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. “The Russians also knew what Gen. Flynn had done and that Gen. Flynn had misled the Vice President and others…that created a compromise situation — a situation where the national security advisor essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians,” Ms. Yates said. In addition to the concern that Flynn was compromised, she said “we felt like the Vice President was entitled to know that the information he had been given, and that he was relaying to the American public, wasn’t true.”

Mr. Clapper confirmed the role that British intelligence, along with other allies, played in sharing information they had with U.S. intelligence officials regarding purported links between Russians and Trump associates. He said the specifics were “quite sensitive.” Curiously, however, the former director of national intelligence claimed to have been in the dark about the FBI’s own investigation into the Russian-Trump campaign relationship.

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates took her turn before the Senate Monday, in a hearing focused on her role in the firing of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. As is now routine in any discussion of the Trump-Russia story, some important details were buried amid the speculation.

Mrs. Yates recounted in detail her unusual visit in January to White House Counsel Donald McGahn, when she said she’d warned that the Justice Department had evidence that Mr. Flynn had lied to White House officials and the public about certain “problematic” conduct.

Mrs. Yates, an Obama appointee, declined to specify the conduct to the Senate, but thanks to Obama-team leaks we know it involved Mr. Flynn discussing sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador though he had publicly said he hadn’t. Mrs. Yates said that because the Russians knew about his lying, Mr. Flynn had been “compromised” and was vulnerable to “blackmail.” Democratic Senators repeated the “compromised” line.

Yet the salient political fact is that President Trump then fired Mr. Flynn for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and the public. Moreover, Mr. Flynn was fired despite the lack of evidence that he conveyed any truly compromising information to the Russian ambassador.

All we know is that Mr. Flynn made a passing reference in his conversation with the ambassador to U.S. sanctions against Russia—a reference Mr. Flynn says he forgot. What was there to blackmail him over?

The important question is whether there was collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign, and on that score the Yates appearance turned up nothing new. For that matter, we’re still waiting for any such evidence from the House, Senate and FBI investigations. Maybe it exists, but no one has produced it.

So far the only crime we know about in this drama is the leak of Mr. Flynn’s name to the press as having been overheard when U.S. intelligence was eavesdropping on the Russian ambassador. Mr. Flynn’s name was leaked in violation of the law after he was “unmasked” by an Obama Administration official and his name was distributed widely across the government.

We don’t know who did the unmasking, but on Monday both Mrs. Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that while in office they had personally reviewed classified reports about “Mr. Trump, his officials or members of Congress” who had been “unmasked.” Both also admitted that they had shared that information with others in government, though they did deny leaking to the press.

We thought readers might like to know those details in case they go unreported anywhere else in the press. The unmasking of the names of political opponents is a serious concern, and the American people need to know how and why that happened here.

With Neil Gorsuch safely on the Supreme Court, the White House is turning its attention to the lower federal courts. President Trump took a major step Monday, naming five new nominees to the federal appellate courts and five to the district courts.

The five appellate nominees are Joan Larsen of the Michigan Supreme Court and John Bush of Kentucky to the Sixth Circuit, Kevin Newsom of Alabama to the 11th Circuit, David Stras of Minnesota to the Eighth Circuit and Amy Barrett of Indiana to the Seventh Circuit.

Judges Larsen and Stras were on Mr. Trump’s original list of 21 judges he said he’d consider for the Supreme Court, and the group has sterling credentials. Ms. Barrett is a law professor at Notre Dame who clerked for federal Judge Laurence Silberman, a giant of the appellate circuits, as well as the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Mr. Newsom is a former clerk to Justice David Souter and has argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court. Mr. Bush is a highly regarded lawyer in private practice who represented President Reagan during the Iran-Contra investigations.

It’s likely the left will pressure Democratic Senators like Al Franken (Minnesota) and Joe Donnelly (Indiana) to withhold their endorsements of the home state judges, known as “blue slips.” But White House Counsel Donald McGahn has put together impressive nominees who will be hard to obstruct for reasons beyond raw partisanship.

Prompt Senate action on the nominations is important—not least because the number of vacancies on the federal bench is around 129. After these latest nominees, that includes 14 on the appellate circuits. President Obama made 331 judicial appointments, and his nominees to the federal appeals courts now represent about a third of the judges.

According to the Brookings Institution, as of September 2016 there were 92 liberal appellate judges and 75 conservatives. It’s time to redress the balance in the 115th Congress while Republicans have a Senate majority.