The retired judge appointed to act as a friend of the court in the Michael Flynn case strongly urged the court Wednesday not to let the Justice Department abandon the prosecution.
In a scorching 83-page submission, John Gleeson said the government's move to drop the case was "riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact," which were contradicted by the positions it has taken in other false statement cases and by its own previous court filings about Flynn's conduct as well as his decisions to plead guilty twice.
"Even recognizing that the Government is entitled to deference in assessing the strength of its case, these claims are not credible," the retired judge wrote. "Indeed, they are preposterous. For starters — and most unusually — they are directly and decisively disproven by the Government's own briefs filed just months ago in this very proceeding."
Gleeson said judges must ordinarily defer to the wishes of the Justice Department about whether to pursue a prosecution, but not when the motives of the government are suspect. In Flynn's case, the government's move to dismiss the case "is based solely on the fact that Flynn is an ally of President Trump."
A former judge selected to advise on a path forward in the criminal case against Michael Flynn is accusing the Justice Department of exercising a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power” to protect an ally of President Donald Trump, distorting known facts and legal principles to shield Flynn from a jail sentence.
The former federal judge, John Gleeson, skewered Attorney General Bill Barr’s handling of the case, describing it as an “irregular” effort that courts would “scoff” at were the subject anyone other than an ally of Trump. The 82-page excoriation featured a painstaking reconstruction of the Flynn case and accused DOJ of contradicting its own arguments and precedents to justify dropping the case against Flynn.
“Even recognizing that the Government is entitled to deference in assessing the strength of its case, these claims are not credible,” Gleeson wrote. “Indeed, they are preposterous.”
