By MATTHEW ROSENBERG May 8th, 2017

WASHINGTON — When did the White House know — and exactly who knew — about conversations that Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, had with the Russian ambassador? That was the focus on Monday at a Senate hearing where Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general, testified about Russia’s interference in the presidential election.

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James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, also testified, giving senators a chance to go well beyond the Flynn affair and ask about leaks of classified information to the news media; the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Russian interference and possible collusion by Trump associates; and — this being a hearing in the Republican-controlled Congress — Hillary Clinton’s emails. 

Here are six highlights from the testimony:

1. Who’s afraid of Mr. Flynn?

Perhaps the biggest takeaway on Monday was that a lot of people had serious concerns about Mr. Flynn serving as national security adviser. But none of them was named Donald J. Trump.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who briefly led the Trump transition team, did not think that Mr. Flynn was qualified to be the national security adviser. President Barack Obama, who fired Mr. Flynn as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, warned Mr. Trump against hiring the retired three-star general when the two met in the Oval Office after the election.

And, days after the inauguration, Ms. Yates, the acting attorney general at the time, warned the White House that Mr. Flynn was vulnerable to foreign blackmail because he had misled his bosses about conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador — and that Russian operatives would know about it.

“To state the obvious: You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians,” Ms. Yates told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee.

But what was obvious to Ms. Yates appears to have been less so to Mr. Trump.

Even after being warned that Mr. Flynn represented a blackmail risk, Mr. Trump kept the general on as national security adviser for another two weeks, firing him only after The Washington Post found out about the warnings. 

2. Leaks trump all else.

In a Twitter message posted hours before Monday’s hearing, Mr. Trump suggested that Ms. Yates had tipped off journalists about Mr. Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador. 

The president presented the accusation against Ms. Yates without evidence, but such details have rarely stopped him. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has made it clear that he believes the leaks of classified information are far more significant than the actual connections between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.

Ms. Yates said Monday that she had never leaked classified information, and was not the source of any reports about Mr. Flynn.

She also pointed out that there were three other people in the room for the conversation, including Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel.

3. The F.B.I. keeps secrets — from everyone.

Among the most secretive investigations conducted by the F.B.I. are those that examine the links between American citizens and foreign governments, which are known as counterintelligence investigations. So when the F.B.I. began examining possible connections between Trump associates and Russia this past summer, it appeared to have told almost no one — not even Mr. Clapper, who was then overseeing the bureau as the director of national intelligence.

Mr. Clapper testified Monday that he was unaware of the investigation into the Trump campaign until James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, acknowledged it when testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20.

For Mr. Clapper, the issue is also one of personal integrity. In early March, after Mr. Trump accused Mr. Obama of wiretapping him during the campaign — a universally rejected accusation for which there is no evidence — Mr. Clapper went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and made a sweeping denial.

“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign,” Mr. Clapper said.

Journalists have since revealed a wrinkle in that story. The F.B.I. obtained a court-approved wiretap on Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, based on evidence that he was operating as a Russian agent.

In his testimony on Monday, Mr. Clapper said his ignorance of the F.B.I. investigation before Mr. Comey’s “comports with my public statements.” 

4. Letting go (of Clinton’s emails) is hard.

Few would disagree that Mr. Flynn’s falsehoods or Russia’s meddling are important. But for some Republicans, the alpha and omega of any congressional hearing is Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.

In the midst of all of the talk of Russia and Ms. Yates’s warnings about Mr. Flynn, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a former Republican presidential candidate, steered the hearing toward the email issue. He asked Mr. Clapper what he would do if, hypothetically, his employee forwarded emails containing classified information.

The question was a thinly veiled reference to Huma Abedin, an aide to Mrs. Clinton, forwarding emails containing classified information to her husband, Anthony D. Weiner, a former New York representative. Mr. Comey said Ms. Abedin forwarded the messages for Mr. Weiner to print for her to give to Mrs. Clinton.

Several current and former government officials familiar with the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of delicate information said that while some emails had been forwarded, a vast majority were instead backed up to Mr. Weiner’s computer.

Mr. Clapper did his best to keep on his game face — and to stick to the hypotheticals.

“It raises all kinds of potential security concerns, again depending on the content of the email, what the intent was, a whole bunch of variables here would have to be considered,” Mr. Clapper said. “But given a hypothetical scenario, I’d be quite concerned.”

5. You can learn a lot from the news media.

Ms. Yates’s brief tenure as acting attorney general came to an abrupt end on the evening of Jan. 30 when she refused to defend Mr. Trump’s executive order barring refugees and travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.

On Monday, Ms. Yates said the order came as a surprise to her. “Not only was the department not consulted, we weren’t even told about it,” she said. “I learned about this from media reports.”

She then defended the decision that got her fired, explaining that she could not defend the order largely because Mr. Trump himself had indicated that it was intended to single out Muslims. Federal judges have since made similar findings as the case winds through the courts.

Republican senators, though, pressed her to admit that she objected to the executive order as a policy. But she refused.

“I don’t believe there are reasonable arguments that are grounded in truth” that would defend the travel ban, she said.

6. Still, those reporters are pesky.

There was a lot of talk about leaks of classified information — some of it comical.

Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, asked Mr. Clapper if he had ever leaked “information, classified or unclassified, to the press?”

Mr. Clapper said that he had not done so knowingly, and then added: “Well, unclassified is not leaking. That’s sort of a non sequitur.”

So Mr. Kennedy clarified, asking Mr. Clapper if he had ever given “information to a reporter that you didn’t want to have your name connected with.”

Mr. Clapper said that he had not, and that he had “had many encounters with the media over my career.”

“I’m sorry about that,” the senator said to laughs.