Judge urged tostop ‘corrupt’ reversal

A retired judge blasted the Justice Department’s plan to drop the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn as corrupt on Friday and urged the judge presiding over the case to reject the move.

John Gleeson, a former trial judge and prosecutor, was named by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to argue against the department’s stance in the highprofile case in Washington. Critics have accused the department and Attorney General William Barr of going light on Flynn, a Trump ally who twice pleaded guilty in the case to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s former ambassador in Washington.

In a court filing, Gleeson said the department should not be allowed to drop the case. The department’s effort to do so was a “corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system,” Gleeson added.

The department unsuccessfully sought to force Sullivan to drop the charges, but an appeals court allowed the judge to consider the matter further.

Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Flynn, called Gleeson’s filing a “smear” that ignored evidence that the Flynn prosecution “was corrupt from its inception.”

Trump, who fired Flynn after just weeks as his national security adviser in 2017, has called the criminal case against his former aide unfair and has suggested he could pardon him.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump took office concerning U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia under President Barack Obama.

Flynn was charged under former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s candidacy.