New Brief Filed In Michael Flynn Case Proves The Anti-Trump Resistance Is Running The Show
In his 70-plus-page brief, retired Judge John Gleeson gave Judge Emmet Sullivan exactly what he wanted: a political hit on Trump that the press could parlay into a new faux scandal.
Retired judge John Gleeson filed an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief in the Michael Flynn criminal case yesterday. Presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan had appointed Gleeson as amicus after the government filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn, directing Gleeson “to present arguments in opposition to the government’s Motion to Dismiss” and to “address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show cause for why Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury.”
Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview about his late-December 2016 conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Later, though, after changing attorneys, Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing the special counsel’s office had threatened to target his son if he did not plead guilty and claiming that his prior counsel was ineffective.
While that motion was pending, Attorney General William Barr directed Missouri-based U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to conduct an independent review of Flynn’s prosecution. After discovering Robert Mueller’s team had withheld material evidence from Flynn’s attorneys, and determining that the FBI lacked a legitimate investigative purpose to interview Flynn, Jensen recommended the charge against him be dismissed.
Rather than put an end to Flynn’s three-year nightmare, however, Sullivan announced he would accept amicus curiae briefs from outside parties. Sullivan also appointed Gleeson to argue against dismissal of the charge, even though Gleeson had just published an op-ed condemning the Department of Justice’s move. Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene and order Sullivan to dismiss the case. Briefing in that case ended Wednesday, and oral arguments on Powell’s petition are set for Friday.
But those impending proceedings didn’t stop Sullivan’s ploy, and in his 70-plus-page brief, Gleeson more than gave the longtime federal judge exactly what he wanted: a political hit on President Donald Trump that the press could parlay into a new faux scandal. Or, as Powell told me, it was a “pathetic, result-driven” brief, both “flatly wrong and ridiculously predictable.”
But as predictable as the finished product was, it was still appalling to see the federal judiciary co-opted by the Resistance.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/11/new-brief-filed-in-michael-flynn-case-proves-the-anti-trump-resistance-is-running-the-show/