Former Trump advisor Michael Flynn asks appeals court to remove judge and dismiss criminal case

Former national security advisor Michael Flynn on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to order a lower court to grant the Justice Department’s controversial request to dismiss the criminal case.

Flynn also asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to take the case away from the lower court judge who has so far refused to sign off on that dismissal request.

That judge, Flynn’s lawyers argued in their appeals filing, by planning to continue the case “indefinitely” despite the wishes of the Justice Department is “rubbing salt in General Flynn’s open wound from” the “misconduct” of prosecutors in the case.

The appeals court filing came days after Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed a former federal judge to argue against the Justice Department’s highly unusual request to drop the case against Flynn in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. 

Sullivan also has asked the ex-judge, John Gleeson, to analyze whether he should hold Flynn in criminal contempt for perjury for twice pleading guilty to a charge that he now says he is innocent of.

The retired Army lieutenant general has admitted, under oath, to lying to FBI agents about his discussions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before President Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Flynn, who briefly served as Trump’s first national security advisor, was awaiting sentencing at the time that the Justice Department, in a bombshell move, this month said it wanted Sullivan to toss the case.

Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, in her appeals court filing Tuesday, suggested that Sullivan has “exceeded [his] authority and egregiously abused [his] discretion by failing to grant the Government’s Motion to Dismiss the Criminal Information and, instead, appointing an amicus [Gleeson] to oppose the motion and to propose contempt and perjury charges against General Flynn.”

Powell also objects to Sullivan’s decision to allow people and groups not involved in the case to file legal briefs objecting to or supporting the case’s dismissal.

Powell wrote that Sullivan, in his recent actions, has disregarded the constitutional rule that “the power to prosecute” rests “solely in the executive branch.”

“The district court has no authority to adopt the role of prosecutor or change the issues in the case by inviting or appointing [Gleeson and other outside parties] to perform the investigation or prosecution that the court deems appropriate,” Powell wrote.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/19/ex-trump-advisor-michael-flynn-asks-appeals-court-to-remove-judge.html