{UAH} FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ORDERS JUDGE TO DROP CASE AGAINIST MICHAEL FLYNN

Federal appeals court orders judge to drop case against Michael Flynn

By Mark Moore

June 24, 2020 | 10:52am

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a judge to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The three-judge panel in Washington, DC, approved Flynn’s defense team’s request to throw out the conviction after the Justice Department announced it would no longer pursue the case.

Flynn admitted to lying to FBI agents in 2017 about his contacts with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the transition period before President Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.

After getting a new defense team earlier this year, Flynn decided to change his plea.

Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan, who presided over Flynn’s case, didn’t immediately move to dismiss it and instead tapped a private attorney, former federal Judge John Gleeson, to argue against the Justice Department’s position.

President Trump cheered the development in a Twitter post.

“Great! Appeals Court Upholds Justice Departments Request To Drop Criminal Case Against General Michael Flynn!,” he wrote.

In the 2-1 decision, Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, said Sullivan overstepped his authority by questioning the prosecutors.

“In this case, the district court’s actions will result in specific harms to the exercise of the Executive Branch’s exclusive prosecutorial power,” Rao wrote.

“If evidence comes to light calling into question the integrity or purpose of an underlying criminal investigation, the Executive Branch must have the authority to decide that further prosecution is not in the interest of justice,” she continued.

But Judge Robert Wilkins said the appeals court was the one exceeding its legal boundaries.

“It is a great irony that, in finding the District Court to have exceeded its jurisdiction, this Court so grievously oversteps its own,” Wilkins, an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote in his dissent. “This appears to be the first time that we have issued a writ of mandamus to compel a district court to rule in a particular manner on a motion without first giving the lower court a reasonable opportunity to issue its own ruling.”

Sullivan had scheduled a hearing on the Justice Department’s argument on July 16.
The full appeals court could review the decision.

In May, the Justice Department reacting to new revelations about the origins of the Russia probe found that the FBI did not have a valid reason for questioning Flynn and moved to drop the case.
But Gleeson in a court filing called the Justice Department’s arguments “transparent disingenuousness.”

“The Government’s narrative is riddled with plot holes,” Gleeson wrote. “For example… when Flynn claimed to have forgotten aspects of the calls, the agents decided to help him out: they deliberately ‘refresh[ed] [Flynn’s] recollection’ by repeatedly prompting him with ‘the exact words Flynn used’ in his conversations with Kislyak.”

With Post wires

EM         -> { Trump for 2020 }

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"