{"id":176061,"date":"2020-09-14T20:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T01:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/09\/14\/stating-the-obvious\/"},"modified":"2020-09-14T20:02:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T01:02:00","slug":"stating-the-obvious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/09\/14\/stating-the-obvious\/","title":{"rendered":"Stating the Obvious"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Retired federal judge John Gleeson, the special master brought in by judge Emmett Sullivan to investigate the DoJ&#8217;s attempt to dismiss charges against Michael Flynn, has come out with his report, and it&#8217;s a doozy.<\/div>\n<p>In it he calls the decision a, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/legal-issues\/court-appointed-adviser-in-michael-flynn-case-says-justice-dept-yielded-to-corrupt-pressure-campaign-led-by-trump\/2020\/09\/11\/6471cff8-f43a-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html\">Corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system<\/a>,&#8221; in addition to noting that it is, &#8220;A gross abuse of prosecutorial power.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s nice that someone has finally called William Barr corrupt.<\/p>\n<p>Barr makes Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell look like Perry Mason:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A retired federal judge accused the Justice Department on Friday of yielding to a pressure campaign led by President Trump in its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/legal-issues\/justice-dept-moves-to-void-michael-flynns-conviction-in-muellers-russia-probe\/2020\/05\/07\/9bd7885e-679d-11ea-b313-df458622c2cc_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_1\">bid to dismiss<\/a> the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to federal investigators.<\/p>\n<p>In a 30-page court filing in Washington, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national-security\/court-asks-retired-judge-to-fight-justice-dept-effort-to-drop-michael-flynn-case-and-examine-if-ex-trump-adviser-committed-perjury\/2020\/05\/13\/8c0deb0a-9567-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_3\">former New York federal judge John Gleeson<\/a> called Attorney General William P. Barr\u2019s request to drop Flynn\u2019s case a \u201ccorrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the United States, Presidents do not orchestrate pressure campaigns to get the Justice Department to drop charges against defendants who have pleaded guilty \u2014 twice, before two different judges \u2014 and whose guilt is obvious,\u201d said Gleeson, who was appointed by the court to argue against the government\u2019s request to dismiss the case.<\/p>\n<p>Gleeson\u2019s filing set the stage for a potentially dramatic courtroom confrontation Sept. 29 with the Justice Department and Flynn\u2019s defense over the fate of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/michael-flynn-charged-with-making-false-statement-to-the-fbi\/2017\/12\/01\/e03a6c48-d6a2-11e7-9461-ba77d604373d_story.html?utm_term=.fcd37d203c8b&amp;tid=lk_interstitial_manual_13&amp;itid=lk_interstitial_manual_13&amp;itid=lk_inline_manual_7\">the highest-ranking Trump adviser to plead guilty <\/a>in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III\u2019s Russia investigation. Friday\u2019s filings echo earlier arguments from Gleeson, who called the Justice Department\u2019s attempt to undo Flynn\u2019s conviction a politically motivated and \u201ca gross abuse of prosecutorial power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wapo.st\/3dQ9pES\"> U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the District of Columbia<\/a> set the hearing date after a federal appeals court <a href=\"https:\/\/wapo.st\/3hQGmn2\">upheld his authority to review and rule on <\/a>the government\u2019s dismissal request on Aug. 31. The hearing before Sullivan was selected from three dates proposed by the parties and is scheduled the same day as the first presidential debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<p>Flynn\u2019s lawyer Sidney Powell on Friday called Gleeson\u2019s filing \u201cpredictable and meaningless,\u201d saying again that Flynn\u2019s investigation was \u201ccorrupt from its inception.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sidney Powell is&nbsp; complete nutjob, by the way, less than a half step away from Q-Anon. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Although Flynn cooperated with the Mueller probe and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/michael-flynn-trumps-former-national-security-adviser-scheduled-to-be-sentenced\/2018\/12\/17\/19ce1bb4-0247-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_17\">was prepared to be sentenced December 2018<\/a>, he switched course after Mueller\u2019s investigation ended and Barr took office last year. Flynn then accused prosecutors and his former attorneys of coercing him into pleading guilty and concealing FBI misconduct, claims that the department and Sullivan rejected.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When Barr came in, someone told Flynn that the fix was in. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPursuant to an active investigation into whether President Trump\u2019s campaign officials coordinated activities with the Government of Russia, one of those officials lied to the FBI about coordinating activities with the Government of Russia,\u201d Gleeson said earlier in the case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is about as straightforward a case of materiality as a prosecutor, court, or jury will ever see,\u201d he wrote.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of all the people who need to go to jail, and be disbarred in the Trump administration, Billy Barr needs it the worst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retired federal judge John Gleeson, the special master brought in by judge Emmett Sullivan to investigate the DoJ&#8217;s attempt to dismiss charges against Michael Flynn, has come out with his report, and it&#8217;s a doozy. In it he calls the decision a, &#8220;Corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system,&#8221; in addition to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,435,364,407,454],"class_list":["post-176061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-crimes","tag-evil","tag-justice","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}