Panel orders judge to drop Flynn case
Michael Flynn won a major victory Wednesday as an appeals court panel ordered the federal judge to dismiss the charges against disgraced former U.S. national security adviser.
A three-judge panel on the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to end the case against Flynn after prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charges that he lied about conversations with a Russian envoy during the Trump transition.
President Donald Trump immediately hailed the ruling as “Great!” The president fired Flynn in 2017 after hearing about his lies but has since hailed him as a persecuted hero.
“What happened to General Flynn should never happen again ... he was persecuted,” Trump told reporters later.
Sullivan made an “unprecedented intrusions on individual liberty and the Executive’s charging authority,” by questioning whether to accept the prosecutions move, appeals court Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion.
Flynn, who pleaded guilty lying to the FBI, will now be cleared of all charges unless Sullivan seeks to appeal the ruling.
Flynn was the only White House official charged in Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI days after the president’s January 2017 inauguration about conversations he had had during the presidential transition period with the Russian ambassador.
The Justice Department moved to dismiss the case in May as part of a broader effort by Attorney General William Barr to scrutinize, and even undo, some of the decisions reached during the Russia investigation, which he has increasingly disparaged.
In its motion, the department argued that Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador — in which they discussed sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia for election interference — were appropriate and not material to the underlying counterintelligence investigation. The department also noted that weeks before the interview, the FBI had prepared to close its investigation into Flynn after not finding evidence of a crime.
But a retired judge appointed by Sullivan, John Gleeson, called the Justice Department’s request a “gross abuse” of prosecutorial power and accused the government of creating a pretext to benefit an ally of the president.
Wednesday’s 2-1 opinion was authored by Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, and joined by Karen LeCraft Henderson, who had asked skeptical questions of lawyers for Flynn and the Justice Department during arguments earlier this month.