Friday, May 22, 2020

D.C. Circuit Orders Judge Sullivan to Respond to Flynn Mandamus Petition

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Is Judge Emmet Sullivan’s collusion cameo nearing its end?
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, on its own motion, ordered Judge Sullivan to respond within ten days to the petition for a writ of mandamus filed by Michael Flynn. Earlier this week, Flynn’s counsel, Sidney Powell, filed the petition for that extraordinary writ, asking the appellate court to instruct Sullivan to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case against Flynn.
That was after Judge Sullivan not only declined to grant the prosecution’s motion, but (a) invited non-parties to intervene in the case by filing amicus briefs (transparently, to make arguments that he somehow has authority to deny DOJ’s motion); and (b) appointed one amicus, former federal judge John Gleeson, as a quasi-prosecutor to make arguments that prosecutors are declining to make in favor of entering a judgment of conviction and sentencing Flynn.
As I noted yesterday, Sullivan’s encouragement of amicus briefs, which are not authorized in criminal cases, flies in the face of Sullivan’s own very firm orders previously declining to permit amicus briefs in Flynn’s case — some two dozen times by Ms. Powell’s count.
The appointment of Gleeson is equally astonishing and offensive to the principle of courts as impartial arbiters. Gleeson — who worked at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York with Loretta Lynch (later President Obama’s attorney general) and Andrew Weissmann (chief prosecutor on the Mueller probe that brought the Flynn case — and now a Biden for President fundraiser) — has co-written a Washington Post op-ed portraying the Justice Department’s dismissal motion as an abuse of power.
Read the rest from Andrew C. McCarthy HERE.

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