That's how I imagine this forum Topic would be worded if it were being created by President Trump or Attorney General Bill Barr.
"Keep America Great 2020." Successor to the original "Make America Great Again" or MAGA cap. File photo from rinselbergMedia.
When the news broke that DOJ had filed in court to dismiss the Mueller investigation charges against Mike Flynn, the first shoe to drop was Brandon Van Grack (Was that a "shoe" or just a newly visible "grack" in the wall?) a top Justice Department prosecutor and "Team Mueller" investigator, who announced that he was stepping down from the Flynn case and from some other ongoing cases at DOJ.
Mike (Michael T) Flynn, retired USA Lt General and former Trump administration National Security Advisor. Photo art from rinselbergMedia.
That put the ball in the court (literally) of District Judge for the U.S. District of Columbia, Emmet G Sullivan, who had accepted Flynn's guilty plea.
I didn't think that this judge would agree to dismiss the charges against Flynn without making more news headlines, and I have not been disappointed. To wit:
"Judge Appoints Outsider to Take On Justice Dept. in Flynn Case"
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A retired judge will also examine whether the former national security adviser committed perjury.
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WASHINGTON — The federal judge overseeing the case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn appointed a hard-charging former prosecutor and judge on Wednesday to oppose the Justice Department’s effort to drop the case and to explore a perjury charge against Mr. Flynn.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s appointment of the former judge, John Gleeson, was an extraordinary move in a case with acute political overtones. Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to investigators as part of a larger inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. . . .
In a new op-ed column for the Washington Post--to put that perspective, and drawing a comparison from the 1969 World Series champion New York Mets, the New York Times and the Washington Post are like the "Tom Seaver" and "Jerry Koosman" of the mainstream liberal media's "starting rotation"--a well known criminal defense attorney from the Miami area has opined that Judge Sullivan is on a wrong track and should dismiss the charges against Flynn without further ado.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G Sullivan Photo credit: rinselbergMedia.
If this can be described as a "bench clearing" (courtroom pun intended) legal melee, a punch has been thrown by a former FBI counterintelligence specialist with a close connection to the Flynn case:
"Ex-F.B.I. Official Is Said to Undercut Justice Dept. Effort to Drop Flynn Case"
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Prosecutors questioned a former F.B.I. official whose notes were used to buttress their motion to dismiss the charge against the president’s first national security adviser.
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WASHINGTON — A key former F.B.I. official cast doubt on the Justice Department’s case for dropping a criminal charge against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during an interview with investigators last week, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Department officials reviewing the Flynn case interviewed Bill Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report on the interview and that it would soon be filed with the court.
The department’s motion referred to notes that Mr. Priestap wrote around the bureau’s 2017 questioning of Mr. Flynn, who later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators during that interview. His lawyers said Mr. Priestap’s notes — recently uncovered during a review of the case — suggested that the F.B.I. was trying to entrap Mr. Flynn, and Attorney General William P. Barr said investigators were trying to “lay a perjury trap.”
That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.
But wait, there's more and shipping is free if you call now for this companion op-ed column in the New York Times from another figure in the Mike Flynn case, former acting assistant attorney general Mary B McCord. (Who wouldn't want to "B" a McCord?)
"Bill Barr Twisted My Words in Dropping the Flynn Case. Here’s the Truth."
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The F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn was constitutional, lawful and for a legitimate counterintelligence purpose.
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... the report of my interview is no support for Mr. Barr’s dismissal of the Flynn case. It does not suggest that the F.B.I. had no counterintelligence reason for investigating Mr. Flynn. It does not suggest that the F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn — which led to the false-statements charge — was unlawful or unjustified. It does not support that Mr. Flynn’s false statements were not material. And it does not support the Justice Department’s assertion that the continued prosecution of the case against Mr. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to knowingly making material false statements to the FBI, “would not serve the interests of justice.”
That's all well and good, but I see no possibility whatsoever that the DOJ's motion to dismiss the charges against Michael Flynn will NOT "carry the day" when it's all said and done.
It's obvious that this U.S. District Judge is just having himself some fun, before the inevitable dismissal of the charges against Mike Flynn.
Who dat say..?
Pennock's forum member randye, reimagined.Click to show
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 05-14-2020).]
Originally posted by rinselberg: That put the ball in the court (literally) of District Judge for the U.S. District of Columbia, Emmet G Sullivan, who had accepted Flynn's guilty plea.
I didn't think that this judge would agree to dismiss the charges against Flynn without making more news headlines, and I have not been disappointed. To wit:
"Judge Appoints Outsider to Take On Justice Dept. in Flynn Case"
Judge "Sullen" appoints a former judge. Both of them Dumbocrats and Trump haters. Just as the Mueller investigative team was made up of only Trump hating dumbocrats. Sounds like collusion to me.
I will soon be joining the Flynn legal team, as I have a defense against perjury for Flynn pleading guilty under oath. All he has to do is I say "I thought I was guilty until I saw all the exculpable evidence they did not give me, as required by law".
Judge "Sullen" appoints a former judge. Both of them Dumbocrats and Trump haters. Just as the Mueller investigative team was made up of only Trump hating dumbocrats. Sounds like collusion to me.
I will soon be joining the Flynn legal team, as I have a defense against perjury for Flynn pleading guilty under oath. All he has to do is I say "I thought I was guilty until I saw all the exculpable evidence they did not give me, as required by law".
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While judges do sometimes appoint such third parties to represent an interest they feel is not being heard in a case, Judge Sullivan’s move was highly unusual, said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University. . . .
“This is extraordinary for the judge to appoint somebody to argue against a prosecutors’ motion to dismiss a criminal case,” Mr. Buell said. “But it’s extraordinary for a prosecutor to move to dismiss this sort of criminal case.”
“What the Justice Department did in the first case is, as far as any of us can figure out, unprecedented,” he added. “So the fact that this is pretty unprecedented too is not that surprising.”
"Judge Appoints Outsider to Take On Justice Dept. in Flynn Case"
Originally posted by rinselberg: While judges do sometimes appoint such third parties to represent an interest they feel is not being heard in a case, Judge Sullivan’s move was highly unusual, said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University. . . .
“This is extraordinary for the judge to appoint somebody to argue against a prosecutors’ motion to dismiss a criminal case,” Mr. Buell said. “But it’s extraordinary for a prosecutor to move to dismiss this sort of criminal case.”
Or an interest that he wants heard. Trump hater judge Sullen repeatedly, repeatedly, prohibited any amicus brief in support of Flynn. Now he is begging for any against Flynn. Follow me to the other Flynn thread, so I can continue with your spanking, .
Well, maybe I will review some of that other thread, as the day wears on.
Ben Rhodes held the post of deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration. Frank Figliuzzi is a former assistant director of the FBI's counterintelligence division. Earlier today, they went on air with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell and confessed to Obamagate, pleading with Attorney General Bill Barr to prosecute them and have them "locked up" for the good of the nation.
I guess that's a matter of interpretation.
At the 6:05 mark, Ben Rhodes remarks that the Trump administration made over 16,000 unmasking requests in 2018, which now seems absolutely unthinkable in the midst of this ongoing coronavirus epipandemic.
But maybe I'm getting my signals crossed.
"Fact Checking Trump And Allies' Push Of 'Obamagate' Claims" Andrea Mitchell for MSNBC; May 15, 2020. NINE MINUTES
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: I'm curious what the Sphinx at Giza has to do with Flynn?
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That's a question that I can answer in a definitive way. It goes back to 2017 (July) when I created that image, which I described as "collage" (not to be confused with "college") but more recently as "photo art."
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Mike Flynn was at the epicenter of a swirling cloud of controversies about the Trump campaign organization, the Trump presidential transition team, and ultimately, the Trump administration itself. . . .
There was an air of mystery about whether or when Mike Flynn might be called upon to testify, and about what kind of testimony he would provide.
What are the scenes or images in the collective psyche that most effectively convey an air of mystery? Almost immediately, the Great Sphinx of Giza suggests itself from the storehouse of latent memories. So much about the Sphinx has been clouded in mystery. (Although the latest archaeological investigations are finally dispelling much of the mystery.)
I invoked a collective psyche as a nod to Carl Jung (1875-1961), the celebrated psychoanalyst and theorist who is credited with the idea of the "collective unconscious" or "objective psyche."
I would be remiss if I did not include the well known sonnet Ozymandias as penned by Percy Bysshe Shelley:
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I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
It's "Sphinx-esque." At least, that's how I have come to think of it. But truth to tell, it may be more directly connected to an event of 1817, when the British Museum received a large fragment of a statue from the great temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel.
Horace Smith was a friend (even before Facebook) of Shelley, and immediately published his own "Ozymandias" as a reprise to Shelley's lines. http://www.potw.org/archive/potw192.html
A Writ of Prohibition would have also worked but additional Stare Decisis in this particular DCA also allowed for a request for removal of Judge Sullivan in a Mandamus request.
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 05-20-2020).]
Former federal prosecutor John Flannery was on the air with Ari Melber on MSNBC's "The Beat" hardly more than hour ago to discuss the Flynn case. You may not care about, or even want to hear any of what was said, but you have just got to see John Flannery's bowtie. Play it with the speaker channel set to OFF or the volume level set all the way down? https://youtu.be/f_VVIPZm6Bs
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 05-20-2020).]
The "amicus judge" that judge Sullivan recruited for his clown show:
Not sure if Glesson has officially jumped out of the Clown Car and into the Sullivan Court Clown Show yet but he's on record 7 years ago ruling exactly what the LAW says.
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[This message has been edited by randye (edited 05-23-2020).]
What this will do is give the Dems another chance to grandstand just before the election.
QFT!
Similar to the Dog and Pony Show the Dems just put on during the AG Barr hearing. I knew politics was a low dirty power struggle but, this goes way beyond my limits.
If this goes along political lines then Flynn may have a setback as the DC Circuit is majority Democrat appointees. If so, and if these judges vote along party lines, this case will end up at the Supreme Court.
In the 2-1 decision previously, the dissenting judge simply said no decision was made by Judge Sullivan, therefore he can't be forced to dismiss the charges because he hasn't made a decision to NOT dismiss the charges. It was lawyer-speak all the way and clearly virtue signalling. Now we shall see if the entire court does this shuffle again.
Follow me to the other Flynn thread, so I can continue with your spanking, 
.
