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A retired judge urged a federal court on Wednesday not to ever permit the Justice Department to dismiss its criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former adviser Michael Flynn, citing proof of a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power.”
The United States district judge hearing the truth, Emmet Sullivan, tapped John Gleeson last month to work as a “friend of your court,” right after the Justice Department abruptly asked a legal court to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general.
The stunning move among the Justice Department followed a pressure campaign by Trump and his allies and came regardless that Flynn had twice pleaded guilty to lying with the FBI about conversations with former Russian Ambassador to america Sergey Kislyak.
“The Department of Justice includes a solemn responsibility to prosecute this situation – just like any other case – without fear or favor,” Gleeson wrote. “It has abdicated that responsibility by a gross abuse of prosecutorial power, wanting to provide special treatment with a favored friend and political ally from the President of the us.”
He was quoted saying Sullivan should proceed with sentencing Flynn.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment beyond just what government has recently argued in the court filings.
Flynn was one of several former Trump aides charged under former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed Moscow’s interference during the 2016 US presidential election.
Gleeson said there had been “ample evidence while in the record that Flynn committed perjury,” or lied under oath.
He recommended that Sullivan take Flynn’s perjury into mind when sentencing him for lying within the FBI, instead of just commencing a follow-on prosecution.
Despite admitting twice under oath to lying towards the FBI and agreeing to cooperate, Flynn later changed legal tactics with his fantastic attorneys now allege the FBI entrapped him.
The Justice Department now says the FBI investigation that led to the charge lacked an adequate legal basis and that Flynn’s statements, even if untrue, were not material.
“The reasons available at authorities are so irregular, for that reason obviously pretextual, that they are deficient,” Gleeson wrote in response. “They reveal an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a determination to dismiss that is based solely on the undeniable fact that Flynn is definitely a political ally of President Trump.”
Gleeson highlighted the conversations that Flynn had with Kislyak that led to the false-statement charge, and compared them against how Flynn portrayed them during his January 2017 FBI interview.
A transcript showed Flynn telling Kislyak he would like to avoid a “tit for tat” over sanctions the usa imposed on Russia simply because of its interference in the 2016 election.
Flynn also asked an appeals court to make Sullivan to just accept the request to drop the actual situation. Arguments if so are set for Friday.
“This Court must stop him (Sullivan) before he further jeopardizes the legitimacy for the federal judiciary,” Flynn told the appeals court in any court filing on Wednesday.
Sullivan has said he cannot work as a “rubber stamp” and should carefully study the facts in this particular “unprecedented” request.
