Posted on 02/16/2018 6:37:05 AM PST by billorites
Extraordinary manipulation by powerful people led to the creation of Robert Mueller’s continuing investigation and prosecution of General Michael Flynn. Notably, the recent postponement of General Flynn’s sentencing provides an opportunity for more evidence to be revealed that will provide massive ammunition for a motion to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea and dismiss the charges against him.
It was Judge Rudolph Contreras who accepted General Flynn’s guilty plea, but he suddenly was recused from the case. The likely reason is that Judge Contreras served on the special court that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to surveil the Trump campaign based on the dubious FISA application. Judge Contreras may have approved one of those four warrants.
The judge assigned to Flynn’s case now is Emmet G. Sullivan. Judge Sullivan immediately issued what is called a “Brady” order requiring Mueller to provide Flynn all information that is favorable to the defense whether with respect to guilt or punishment. Just today, Mueller’s team filed an agreed motion to provide discovery to General Flynn under a protective order so that it can be reviewed by counsel but not disclosed otherwise.
This development is huge. Prosecutors almost never provide this kind of information to a defendant before he enters a plea — much less after he has done so. This is one of myriad problems in our justice system. As Judge Jed Rakoff wrote several years ago, people who are innocent enter guilty pleas every day. They simply can no longer withstand the unimaginable stress of a criminal investigation. They and their families suffer sheer exhaustion in every form — financial, physical, mental, and emotional. Add in a little prosecutorial duress — like the threat of indicting your son — and, presto, there’s a guilty plea.
Judge Sullivan is the perfect judge to decide General Flynn’s motion. The judicial hero of my book, Emmet Sullivan held federal prosecutors in contempt for failing to disclose evidence, dismissed the corrupted prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Department of Justice.
That independent counsel, Henry Schuelke, issued a scathing report finding systematic, intentional and pervasive misconduct in the Department of (In)Justice. He identified the prosecution’s deliberate concealment of evidence favorable to the defense. That is why Judge Sullivan both issues such Brady orders in each of his cases and encourages every other judge in the country to do the same.
Emmet G. Sullivan is one judge who is ready, willing and able to hold Mr. Mueller accountable to the law and who has the wherewithal to dismiss the case against General Flynn — for egregious government misconduct — if Mueller doesn’t move to dismiss it himself.
Judge Sullivan’s experience can only help General Flynn as more evidence appears every day to reveal that Flynn should not have been prosecuted. James Comey testified to Congress that the agents who interviewed Flynn — including the hopelessly compromised Peter Strzok — thought Flynn was telling the truth. The entire FISA warrant application becomes more problematic by the day.
Within the next six weeks, we will probably have the bombshell report of Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice. He is the one who discovered the Strzok-Page emails, and he has been investigating the FBI and DOJ in their Clinton cover-up for the last year.
Since Flynn entered his guilty plea, we’ve learned that information Mr. Comey leaked deliberately to “trigger” Robert Mueller’s entire investigation was classified. Also, FBI agents Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were working on an “insurance policy” to protect the country against a Trump presidency. It seems plausible that this “insurance policy” included the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Indeed, the bases for throwing out everything Robert Mueller has touched grow exponentially as more truth finds sunlight.
Watching guilty pleas evaporate is nothing new for Mr. Mueller’s favored lieutenant Andrew Weissmann. Along with his Enron Task Force comrade Leslie Caldwell, Weissmann terrorized Arthur Andersen partner David Duncan into pleading guilty. (RELATED: Meet The Very Shady Prosecutor Robert Mueller Has Hired For The Russia Investigation)
Weissmann and Caldwell made Duncan testify at length against Arthur Andersen when they destroyed the company and 85,000 jobs only to be reversed by a unanimous Supreme Court three years later. Turns out, the “crime” they “convinced” Mr. Duncan to plead guilty to was not a crime at all. The court allowed Duncan to withdraw his plea. And, that was not the only Weissmann-induced plea to be withdrawn either. Just ask Christopher Calger.
Judge Sullivan is the country’s premiere jurist experienced in the abuses of our Department of Justice. He knows a cover-up when he sees one. Until the Department is cleaned out with Clorox and firehoses, along with its “friends” at the FBI, Judge Sullivan is the best person to confront the egregious government misconduct that has led to and been perpetrated by the Mueller-Weissmann “investigation” and to right the injustices that have arisen from it. Stay tuned for the fireworks.
Sidney Powell, former federal prosecutor and veteran of 500 federal appeals, is the author of LICENSED TO LIE: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. She is a Senior Fellow of the London Center for Policy Research and Senior Policy Advisor for America First.
I hope this works out for him. Withholding pertinent evidence is a punishable crime.
Flynn is a hero. He was the only one who tried to stop the Iranian sellout. I’m looking at you McMaster.
Flynn needs to withdraw his plea and sue the snot out of the federal government for false prosecution.
I disagree.
Evidently, his guilty plea was part of a deal to keep Mueller from going after his son, some lobbying issue, and his family finances.
If he withdraws, then those things are open again to Mueller.
Flynn should allow these revelations to force a judge to vacate the plea. That would mean Flynn did not violate the agreement. Should mean that Mueller cannot do so either.
The case should be thrown out. General Flynn can’t get his money or reputation back but it does seem like a bit of gray area about his honesty. But drag him through court, no way. If the court doesn’t fix this, Trump should pardon him.
He will do just that.
1. In December the new judge Sullivan told Mueller to present exonerated evidence if there was any to Flynn and his legal counsel
2. In January then Mueller asked for a stay of sentencing Flynn, pushing it to May
3. In February, Mueller asked that the evidence he turned over to Flynn legal counsel be sealed
4. We still don’t know about why Judge Contreras was removed from the Flynn case, after he accepted Flynn’s guilty plea (many suspect he was on the FISA court when Carter Page application for warrant came through)
All of this put together spells that Mueller will have to drop the case
From what I understood, the only reason Flynn pleaded guilty was because they broke him financially and threatened to go after his son.
And that differs from blackmail how?
I’ve been following Judge Sullivan for quite a while now - Flynn hit the jackpot when Contreras was forced to recuse and Sullivan ended up as his judge.
The Flynn political persecution and miscarriage of justice is not just finished, there will be blowback on Mueller
Manaforte will skate on whatever they have on him, if anything
They never had anything on Carter Page
Nunes just gutted the Trump Russian Collusion pretext for the Mueller investigation and Grassley is firing the opening salvo on the Uranium One scandal that both Mueller and Comey covered up
Soon the hunters will become the hunted
How does a prosector agree to not pursue someone who has broke the law? If Flynn’s son broke the law he should be prosecuted. Plea deals and bargains should be barred. Granted he probably violated some arcane law designed specifically to be invoked as needed by the government.
None, but it’s legal if you’re a government. /sarcasm
There are reports that initially the FBI didn't believe Flynn lied to them, but that changed once Mueller got appointed.
Comey is on record saying in a classified briefing that the FBI did not think he lied and it just came out. If that information, material to his case, was not disclosed to his defense attorney, then thats misconduct.
Yeah the problem is that Flynn has confessed in detail to the crime, that is how a guilty plea works. The current Judge is on record as to his policy of automatically issuing a Brady order as a result of his experience in the Sen. Stevens corruption trial. The bar for vacating a guilty plea on the basis of actual innocence is incredibly high. Prosecutorial misconduct alone is usually insufficient. You must also demonstrate misconduct or gross incompetence of defense lawyers. Furthermore, the speculation as to what exculpatory evidence might exist centers on a supposed judgement by interviewing agents that Flynn’s comments in his FBI interview were truthful. The opinion of the agents of his truthfulness are of course contradicted by the confession of Gen Flynn who has admitted to knowingly and deliberately making false statements. When you have already said you did it, there can be no exculpatory information. At this point, it’s mitigating circumstances related to sentencing. Flynn can be pardoned, until then he is an admitted criminal.
No way it can be!.....With no collusion found, Muellers job NOW is to obfuscate and run out the clock....postpone the inevitable...He's trapped!...if he finishes the investigation without an impeachment or crippling the Trump Administration he himself is at risk!.....IMHO...He's created a “Sisyphean Task” for himself and others...
The Flynn case was built on an illegal FISA warrant. Any information obtained from an illegal warrant cannot be used as evidence.
Refer to the comments on CTH in which JL says (February 15, 2018 at 8:54 pm):
This line in the letter to Rep. Nunes jumped out at me:“As you know, any such transcripts would be classified. It may also be helpful for me to observe hat, in a typical process of considering an application, we make no systematic record of questions we ask or responses the government gives.”
Am I reading this correctly? There is no transcript of the actual face-to-face between the FISC judge and the FBI lawyer? No record anywhere?
Could it be that part of asking for this information is so that the public becomes aware of how this secret court operates? Could this line be a warning from the Judge Collyer saying, “Don’t forget that you folks created this Frankenstein court. Are you sure you want light shining into the darkness for the people to see?”
Oh yeah, Judge Collyer, we do. We indubitably do.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/15/fisa-court-presiding-judge-rosemary-collyer-responds-to-chairman-nunes-and-chairman-goodlatte-request-for-fisc-documents/comment-page-2/#comments
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