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The judge overseeing the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn drew even more concerns and criticism Wednesday by appointing a retired Clinton-era judge to argue against Flynn’s DOJ-backed motion for his case to be dismissed and to explore a possible additional “perjury or contempt charges” against him for changing his plea.
“The Justice Department moved last week to drop the prosecution of Flynn launched by special counsel Robert Mueller, but U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan slammed the brakes on that effort by announcing Wednesday evening that he is appointing a former federal judge to argue against the government’s unusual bid to dismiss the case against an ally of President Donald Trump,” Politico reported.
Sullivan reportedly also directed retired New York federal judge John Gleeson “to recommend whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt charge for perjury — apparently for declaring under oath at two different court proceedings that he was guilty of lying to the FBI, before he reversed course in January and claimed he had never lied.”
This came only a day after Sullivan issued a highly “unusual” and controversial order opening Flynn’s case up for outside comment.
Judge refuses to dismiss Flynn’s case, yet, solicits 3rd party input; attorneys fire back immediately https://t.co/UwTJDac1Zc
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 13, 2020
Combined, these moves have been perceived as a biased, partisan slap in the face to both the DOJ and Flynn, particularly given all the information that’s known about how Obama-era FBI officials had unethically lured Flynn into a perjury trap under false pretenses.
And given also all the information pertaining to how former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation team had coerced a guilty plea out of Flynn by threatening to prosecute his son over unrelated matters.
“It is a motion to dismiss with one of the most factual, affidavit-laden support in terms of the evidence behind it to support the application to dismiss,” Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, a former court judge and district attorney, noted late Thursday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
Listen to her remarks below (disable your adblocker if the video doesn’t appear):
“It’s a ministerial move that this judge apparently doesn’t want to make,” Pirro continued, referring to Sullivan’s refusal to just dismiss the case, “so he has to bring in another judge, who by the way is a Clinton-appointed retired federal judge. This is not something that needs to be done.”
She added that the DOJ’s motion is backed by legions of evidence.
“There was no predicate for him to be investigated in the first place, he was told he didn’t need an attorney and then was denied effective assistance of counsel — all these wrongdoings done by the by the federal government and the FBI,” she said.
All true.
But it’s not just “right-wing conspiracy theorists,” as some deceitful CNN “reporters” might say, who’re positing this argument. So is the 130-year-old Wall Street Journal’s entire editorial board.
“Judge Sullivan doesn’t normally ask others to write his decisions, so what’s the point in this case? This isn’t a Supreme Court argument seeking competing points of view. The competition here is between defense and prosecution, and they both now agree,” the board wrote Wednesday.
“This is a criminal case subject to normal rules of evidence that were clearly violated by Mr. Mueller’s prosecutorial team.”
All this raises the question of whether Sullivan is a partisan actor.
A profile of Sullivan published by Fox News two years ago revealed that he’s “assisted” Democrats in their efforts against President Donald Trump at least twice.
“Earlier this year, Sullivan gave an assist to Democrats suing Trump over claims he violated the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments provision banning the acceptance of gifts and foreign domestic interests through his hotel business and other properties,” FNC reported at the time.
He also once reportedly forced the federal government to literally “turn that plane around” and bring two illegal aliens who’d been en route home back to the U.S.
But on the other hand, in 2009 he threw out a bogus corruption case against deceased Sen. Ted Stevens, a Republican. Of course, given that the case against Flynn has been just as bogus, this raises the question of why he’s not already dismissed this case.
Judge Sullivan once oversaw a case in which rogue US prosecutors and investigators broke the law to convict a sitting US senator, Ted Stevens. @GenFlynn’s case is worse. This was the leadership of the FBI. The judge has no choice but to dismiss. https://t.co/EuseQZjwSY
— Bernard B. Kerik (@BernardKerik) April 27, 2020
It also raises the question of why he’s entrusted Gleeson, who is indeed a partisan actor, to play a role in the ongoing proceedings.
On Monday, days before he was appointed by Sullivan, Gleeson penned a joint column for one of America’s most anti-Trump papers, The Washington Post, arguing against the dismissal of Flynn’s case.
“The department now says it cannot prove its case. But Flynn had already admitted his guilt to lying to the FBI, and the court had accepted his plea,” he and two others wrote as they ignored the coercion involved in Flynn’s plea.
“The purported reasons for the dismissal clash not only with the department’s previous arguments in Flynn’s case — where it assured the court of an important federal interest in punishing Flynn’s dishonesty, an interest it now dismisses as insubstantial — but also with arguments it has routinely made for years in similar cases not involving defendants close to the president.”
Sullivan’s controversial moves also came only days after former President Barack Hussein Obama, whose administration was responsible for the malfeasance against Flynn, broke precedent by issuing a statement blasting the DOJ for its decision to drop its case.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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