When will this circus ever stop? As Katie wrote, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been dealt a setback in his legal fight to clear his good name from the politically motivated attacks he suffered from the Obama Department of Justice. In an en banc hearing, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the biased judge presiding in Flynn’s case, Emmet Sullivan, can move forward with hearings on the recent Department of Justice motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Flynn. This came after the lengthy history of DOJ/FBI overreach and possible prosecutorial misconduct regarding their investigation to Flynn were unearthed (via Axios):
The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an 8-2 ruling on Monday denying former national security adviser Michael Flynn's petition to force a federal judge to immediately drop his criminal case, as requested by the Justice Department.
Why it matters: The ruling will allow District Judge Emmet Sullivan to hold hearings to discuss the motion to dismiss the case against Flynn, who pleaded guilty in the Mueller investigation to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the former Russian ambassador.
The big picture: The Justice Department under Attorney General Bill Barr moved to dismiss the charges against Flynn in May, following a review that alleged prosecutorial misconduct by the FBI agents who had interviewed Flynn.
Judge Sullivan pumped the brakes on the case and sought to hear from outside parties on whether he should accept the government's motion.
Flynn's lawyers subsequently asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to order Judge Sullivan to immediately drop the case before hearings could be held.
A panel of three judges ruled 2-1 that Sullivan must accept the request, but the full 11-judge court of appeals — which issued Monday's ruling — agreed to rehear the case.
Flynn update - here is the order denying the mandamus.
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) August 31, 2020
The case goes back to Judge Sullivan.
The opinion ends with these words:
"we expect the District Court to proceed with appropriate dispatch." ?? pic.twitter.com/CQouaOhGzq
This is ridiculous. There is no case here. None. The prosecutor resigned. The defense team obviously wants this dismissed. And the Department of Justice filed the motion to dismiss the criminal charges. No one wants this anymore. For starters, there was no reason to interview Michael Flynn. None. They had no evidence, and the route they were going was insane.
‘Flynn might be a Russian agent.’ He’s the victim of the Trump-Russia collusion delusion that was a total hoax. Yet, the Trump dossier, funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrats, set off this wild goose chase. The FBI fell for it hook, line, and sinker. They weaponized it to go after Flynn and secure FISA spy warrants against Carter Page, a former campaign official. Oh, and it set off Crossfire Hurricane, the spy operation against the Trump campaign proper.
President Barack Obama all but gave the kill order on Flynn in that infamous January 5, 2017 meeting on how to protect the FBI’s counterintelligence probe from the Trump administration. The former president ordered his top national security and law enforcement officials to get the right people on Flynn. It was also discovered the Joe Biden, who claimed to know nothing about this Flynn probe, suggested using the Logan Act to go after Flynn—all of this thanks to the notes of disgraced former FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who, by the way, reportedly signed off on this whole circus. The paperwork for the authorization of Crossfire Hurricane was called a “train wreck” by former bureau intelligence official Kevin Brock.
“What this FBI document clearly establishes is that Crossfire Hurricane was an illicit, made-up investigation lacking a shred of justifying predication, sprung from the mind of someone who despised Donald Trump, and then blessed by inexperienced leadership at the highest levels who harbored their own now well-established biases,” he wrote.
For Flynn, he was interviewed by the FBI in January of 2017, despite having zero grounds to do so, but that didn’t matter. Equally disgraced FBI heads James Comey and Andrew McCabe were out to get Flynn no matter what. I mean, the DOJ motion outlines a plot from within the FBI to ensnare Flynn in a perjury trap. What’s more interesting is the fact that the FBI was actually about to wrap up its investigation of Flynn, where even Comey admitted that his calls to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak—one of the reasons why he was targeted—were pretty much legit. Yeah, all of this over run-of-the-mill phone calls. A buried DOJ memo at the time drafted six days after the interview exonerated Flynn of being a Russian agent. Why was that buried? Who gave that order? That’s the end of the story with all of this collusion nonsense, really.
The entire Mike Flynn saga -- the manufactured controversy, media leaks, his resignation/firing, and later guilty plea -- was a huge factor in why the "Russia scandal" became so all-consuming. Now the basis for the entire episode has been 100% proven to be a complete farce pic.twitter.com/JpDBqaO7xF
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 7, 2020
Also, the agents who spoke with Flynn felt like he didn’t lie to them. Then, Comey gets fired. Special Counsel Robert Mueller takes over and rehashes the Logan Act nonsense, puts the screws to Flynn, threatens him financially, and forces the “lying to the FBI” plea deal. The Special Counsel investigation (SCO) alone is worthy of another review, given its conduct with Flynn and Paul Manafort, who the latter appears to have had his attorney-client privilege torched in order to compel his attorney to spill anything on whether Trump was guilty of collusion. There was nothing there, but allegedly someone leaked a fake news story to CNN that Manafort was under a FISA spy warrant to that effect.
Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel aptly noted that given the Flynn fiasco, it seems as if the whole SCO was created to give a legitimacy polish on the FBI’s initial collusion probe that went off the hinges. It was a cover-up.
As for Judge Sullivan, well, he went all Col. Kurtz. With the case around Flynn being ripped apart, he had to have known he was in trouble. He called Flynn a traitor in open court and warned that his sentence would be harsher than what was being recommended. When Attorney General William Barr launched a torpedo, which hit this case broadside, he doubled down. These folks don’t like to admit that they’re wrong. He invited amicus briefs from Tromp deranged lawyers, where he pretty much outsourced the prosecution. That’s unconscionable. Second, he tapped a former judge, John Gleeson, who only happens to work for the law firm that represents DOJ resister-in-chief Sally Yates. Gleeson’s past opinion noted that the government has near-universal authority to nix cases it brings before the courts. Sullivan lost the first round of the appeals court gauntlet but appealed, and now we’re here.
It’s looking very much like the New York Sun’s editorial from May was correct. Sullivan is trying to run out the clock, hoping this carries into the 2020 election, pray for a Biden win, and then have his DOJ refile the charges.
The anti-Trump resistance doesn’t give up so easily.