Appeals Court Rejects Flynn’s Attempt to End Trial
The crux of yesterday’s ruling by the D.C. District COA is you cannot force a US District judge to drop criminal charges before they have ruled. In an enblanc session on Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals – D.C. Circuit ruled 8-2 against Flynn’s plea to drop charges before Columbia District Judge Emmett Sullivan had ruled on the DOJ motion to dismiss Flynn’s case. District Judge Emmet Sullivan can now proceed to examine why the Justice Department took the unprecedented step of dropping its criminal case against Flynn. This flies in the face of a three judge panel 2-1 ruling deciding Judge Emmett should drop the case.
George W. Bush appointee Karen Henderson and Trump appointee Neomi Rao, each filed a dissent claiming the case should be reassigned to another judge as Judge Emmett Sullivan has shown partiality and the COA has been inconsistent with its established practice. The COA has not ruled out another Flynn appeal at a later date after Judge Sullivan rules.
It’s a function of money. You can chop up your neighbor and throw the body in Galveston Bay and get away with it if you have a couple million to spend fighting it. If he has a worth to someone with endless amounts of cash, then sure, he will eventually be set free.
Michael:
I sent you an email as an aside. Please email me back. Flynn has political backing which is worth more than money. He will get pardoned even after his day in court. He should suffer a little bit first.
Sullivan will sustain the motion after some kind of hearing is what I would expect now.
I agree. I am not fan of Flynn and I will be the first to observe that for the former chief of DIA he proved to be amazingly inept. Add to this his lunatic views on Iran. Flynn has long been obsessed with finding a causus belli to justify an attack on Tehran. In this sense keeping him in check was essential and firing him from the position of national security advisor weakened Iran hawks in Trump administration. Aalthough Mattis was even worse) . As Mark Perry observed:
If such weaklings like Strzok can deceive and entrap him, what about real hard core professionals? How such a person could raise to the the top in DIA? Do we need such a gullible person as a national security advisor?
But, at the same time, the key event here is different, and in this sense his talks with the Russian ambassador does not matter much (both sides understood that they are recorded)
What FBI did to him is abhorrable, and puts long dark shadow on Obama administration: this is really not about Flynn but about the politicization of FBI in the manner that remind me NKVD practices (which was famous for eliminating Stalin political opponents by declaring them to be British spies and torturing out the confessions), no matter what is our position on the political spectrum.
Flynn won’t need a pardon. A motion to dismiss is on the table moved by the prosecution and not opposed by the defense. The decision of the Appeals Court is pretty much that they won’t bang on Sullivan until he has completed doing the wrong thing and he can avoid that by not doing the wrong thing. Wrong thing being what? Thinking he should make the DOJ’s decisions for them and/or appearing not to be impartial concerning the defendant. So I do not expect a decision like “I am going to make the DOJ’s decision for them so that I can put this guy in jail”. But if he goes that way, well it won’t make it through appeal.