Ex-judge: Dismissal bid abuses power
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department showed a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power” in its push to drop the case against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, a court-appointed arbiter said Wednesday.
Retired federal judge John Gleeson said the Justice Department’s bid to dismiss Flynn’s case should be denied because its arguments “are not credible,” suggesting the government violated safeguards designed to prevent “dubious dismissals of criminal cases that would benefit powerful and well-connected defendants.”
“The Department of Justice has a solemn responsibility to prosecute this case – like every other case – without fear or favor,” Gleeson argued. “It has abdicated that responsibility through a gross abuse of prosecutorial power, attempting to provide special treatment to a favored friend and political ally of the President of the United States. It has treated the case like no other, and in doing so has undermined the public’s confidence in the rule of law.”
Gleeson’s searing rebuke is the latest in what has become a fraught and long-running prosecution of the former Army general. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has been overseeing the case for the past three years, appointed Gleeson to challenge the Justice Department’s motion to drop the case and to examine whether Flynn committed perjury in declaring his innocence for a crime he had earlier admitted.
The legal clash has reached the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., where Flynn accused Sullivan of abusing his discretion and asked the higher court judges to force the dismissal of the case.
The Justice Department declined to comment on Gleeson’s filing, referring to its own court papers calling on the court to dismiss the case.