On Thursday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a federal judge to respond to the petition of President Trump’s former national security adviser to drop the charges against him after the Justice Department submitted a motion to throw out the case in light of newly disclosed evidence.
Earlier this week, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s attorney Sydney Powell “filed an emergency writ of mandamus to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking that the prosecution against Flynn be dismissed as the Justice Department has requested, and for Judge Emmet Sullivan to be taken off the case,” Fox News reported Thursday.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Sullivan Thursday to respond to Flynn’s petition by June 1 and asked the Department of Justice to respond “in its discretion” within that period.
“Writs of mandamus are extraordinary remedies, which are appropriate when there has been a ‘usurpation of judicial power’ that is ‘clear and indisputable,'” Fox News notes.
As The Daily Wire has chronicled, the Justice Department filed a motion on May 7 to dismiss the case against Flynn “after a considered review of all the facts and circumstances of this case, including newly discovered and disclosed information.” Among that newly disclosed information was evidence that the interview upon which the case was built was effectively a “perjury trap,” as Attorney General William Barr has described it.
The case against Flynn, The Associated Press has underscored, was “one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller,” whose exhaustive, multi-million-dollars investigation ultimately concluded that there was no substantive evidence of any “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Though the Justice Department moved to toss out the case, Judge Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia tabled the motion, instead opening the case up for amicus briefs from interested parties.
Flynn’s attorney has blasted Sullivan’s move as a “travesty of justice” and a flagrant abuse of power. “This travesty of justice has already consumed three or more years of an innocent man’s life — and that of his entire family. No further delay should be tolerated or any further expense caused to him and his defense,” Powell wrote in a court filing responding to Sullivan’s decision. “This Court should enter the order proposed by the government immediately.”
Attorneys general of 15 states appear to agree with Flynn and his attorney, signing an amicus brief this week calling on Sullivan to support the DOJ’s motion “because such punditry disrobes the judiciary of its cloak of impartiality.” The court “lacks authority to exercise judgement over a decision that constitutionally belongs to the executive branch,” said attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia filed in the briefing filed Monday.
In an interview with CBS News on May 7, Barr explained why he ordered that Flynn’s case be dismissed. “It’s on the question of materiality that we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on,” he said. “They did not have a basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn at that stage, based on a perfectly legitimate and appropriate call he made as a member of the transition.”
Asked by Herridge if “the counterintelligence case against General Flynn was simply left open to lay a trap for lying,” Barr said, “Yes.”
“I think a very important evidence here was that this was not a bona fide counterintelligence investigation – was that they were closing the investigation in December,” he explained. “They started that process. And on January 4th, they were closing it. They initially tried some theories of how they could open another investigation, which didn’t fly. And then they found out that they had not technically closed the earlier investigation. And they kept it open for the express purpose of trying to catch, lay a perjury trap for General Flynn.”
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