{"id":176462,"date":"2020-06-10T19:23:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T00:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/06\/10\/can-of-whup-ass-opened-up-on-corrupt-us-attorney-general\/"},"modified":"2020-06-10T19:23:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T00:23:00","slug":"can-of-whup-ass-opened-up-on-corrupt-us-attorney-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/06\/10\/can-of-whup-ass-opened-up-on-corrupt-us-attorney-general\/","title":{"rendered":"Can of Whup-Ass Opened Up on Corrupt US Attorney General"},"content":{"rendered":"
John Gleeson the former federal judge appointed as an amicus by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan to review the decision by federal prosecutors to drop charges against Michael Flynn, has issued a report describing their decision as a corrupt and political abuse of prosecutorial discretion<\/a>.<\/div>\n

I knew that William Barr was an egregiously corrupt political hack, and I knew that his attempt to drop charges was motivated by a desire to please Donald Trump, but I did not expect this fact to be called out so explicitly in a legal filing authored by a former federal judge:<\/p>\n

A retired federal judge accused the Justice Department on Wednesday of a \u201cgross abuse of prosecutorial power\u201d and urged a court to reject its attempt to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn, President Trump\u2019s former national security adviser.<\/p>\n

The arguments in a 73-page brief<\/a> by John Gleeson, the retired judge and former mafia prosecutor appointed to argue against the Justice Department\u2019s unusual effort to drop the Flynn case, were the latest turn in a politically charged case that now centers on the question of whether Mr. Flynn should continue to be prosecuted. He said Mr. Flynn should be sentenced.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department\u2019s intervention last month<\/a>, directed by Attorney General William P. Barr, came after a long public campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies and prompted an outcry from former law enforcement officials that the administration was further politicizing the department.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Mr. Gleeson\u2019s brief amounted to a step-by-step dissection of the factual claims and legal arguments the Justice Department put forward last month to justify withdrawing a charge of making false statements that Mr. Flynn had twice pleaded guilty to. Mr. Gleeson said the department\u2019s intervention was an example of the kind of \u201ccorrupt, politically motivated dismissals\u201d that judges have the power to guard against.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reasons offered by the government are so irregular, and so obviously pretextual, that they are deficient,\u201d Mr. Gleeson wrote. \u201cMoreover, the facts surrounding the filing of the government\u2019s motion constitute clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse. They reveal an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

To justify Mr. Barr\u2019s decision to drop the case, the Justice Department has argued that Mr. Flynn\u2019s lies were not \u201cmaterial\u201d to any legitimate investigation \u2014 rejecting the department\u2019s own previous position that his lies were relevant to the counterintelligence inquiry into the scope of Russia\u2019s covert operation to tilt the 2016 election in Mr. Trump\u2019s favor and the nature of links to Trump campaign associates.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gleeson, who had co-written an op-ed article<\/a> calling into question the legitimacy of Mr. Barr\u2019s intervention before Judge Sullivan appointed him, offered a blistering critique of that rationale.<\/p>\n

\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 F.B.I. about coordinating activities with the government of Russia,\u201d Mr. Gleeson wrote. \u201cIt is hard to conceive of a more material false statement than this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marching through other issues raised by Mr. Flynn\u2019s defenders and embraced by the Justice Department, Mr. Gleeson portrayed the arguments as \u201cabsurd,\u201d \u201clegally unsound,\u201d \u201cmisdirection,\u201d \u201cpreposterous\u201d and \u201cempty.\u201d He said the department\u2019s request was both \u201criddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact\u201d and departed from its position in other cases \u2014 all evidence, he said, that its rationale for dropping the case was just a pretext.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government may not enlist a court in dismissing a case solely because the defendant is a friend and political ally of the president \u2014 and where the ostensible reasons advanced for dismissal amount to a thin and unpersuasive disguise,\u201d wrote Mr. Gleeson, who gained fame<\/a> as the prosecutor who put the Gambino crime boss John Gotti in prison, and went on to serve as a federal judge in Brooklyn from 1994 to 2016.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIf the executive wishes for the judiciary to dismiss criminal charges \u2014 as opposed to issuing a pardon or taking other unilateral action \u2014 the reasons it offers must be real and credible. Its professed concerns about materiality are neither.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Damn.  That’s gonna leave a mark.<\/p>\n

Why there hasn’t been a complaint filed against Barr to the Washington, DC bar for discipline is beyond me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Gleeson the former federal judge appointed as an amicus by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan to review the decision by federal prosecutors to drop charges against Michael Flynn, has issued a report describing their decision as a corrupt and political abuse of prosecutorial discretion. I knew that William Barr was an egregiously corrupt …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,407],"class_list":["post-176462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176462"}],"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=176462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}