Know Your Legal Terms
MR. GOWDY: Collusion, conspiracy, coordination, do they have appreciably different meanings to you?
MS. YATES: I've never been entirely sure what collusion is to be honest with you.
MR. GOWDY: Me either.
MS. YATES: When I hear that term, I think one of the dangerous things is it means different things to different people. So that's not really a term of art that we normally used or that is used, you know, certainly in the criminal process.
There's conspiracy, which certainly you're familiar with from your time as a prosecutor, and I would expect others are too. But I think collusion has come to mean – and some of this is from, you know, what I read about now as well. I'm trying really hard here today to distinguish between what I knew at the time versus what I've read about since then in trying to make sure that things don't sort of meld together, but particularly since I've left, there's lots of discussion about collusion. And as I said, I think that means different things to different people. So I think we have to be careful when with define that, what it means.
MR. GOWDY: I do too. I don't ever remember hearing the word until earlier 2016. But lets do this, just for purposes of today, if we can, if you're comfortable doing it, conspiracy, let's use that term as if it has a potentially criminal connotation, either 846 conspiracy, 370 –
MS. YATES: Yeah.
MR. GOWDY: The way that we are used to hearing that and others who did it for a living, conspiracy denotes criminality or potential criminality. Collusion, let's just say that does not involve criminality. It's conduct. I mean–
MS. YATES: But it can, it.
MR. GOWDY: It can, which is why I also throw in the word coordination. I mean, you can collude to go to lunch, but most people call that coordinating instead of colluding. So the reason I throw in all three words is because I don't want to miss one of them and have somebody say, 'Well, you didn't ask her this ," or, "You didn't ask her that." So I'm going to ask them all three together. And then, if you think they are not appropriately used together, you can tell me otherwise.
MS. YATES: Okay.