Sally Yates: If Trump doesn’t talk to Mueller he doesn’t have ‘moral authority to lead’

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said on Friday that President Trump would be indicating a lack of “moral authority” if he refused to sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller. 

“I don’t understand how he would have the moral authority to lead this country if he didn’t answer those questions,” Yates said at a conference in New York, according to The Associated Press. 

Mueller’s team of investigators have been trying to negotiate an interview with the president for months, though it remains unclear if such a sit-down will come to pass.

{mosads}

Trump has personally expressed a desire to speak with Mueller and his team. John Dowd, a personal attorney for Trump who resigned in March, had advised the president not to sit for an interview with investigators.

Since Dowd’s departure, Trump’s legal team has not indicated whether the president will be interviewed by the special counsel.

NBC News reported Thursday that Mueller’s team is preparing to move forward without its Trump interview following the FBI raids Monday on the office, home and hotel room of Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s personal attorneys.

Mueller is investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election and whether members of the Trump campaign conspired with Moscow to disrupt and influence the race. 

Yates served briefly as the acting attorney general shortly after Trump took office last year, but was fired after she declined to defend the president’s controversial executive order barring citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the U.S.