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In the face of a massive show of force by militarized police, "Freedom Day" protesters again on the streets of Melbourne, Australia where its Saturday. The protest in opposition to the strict lockdown.... A two week nationwide coronavirus lockdown is being envisioned by cabinet ministers in Israel..... In Canada a university professor telling his students in-class exams aren't mandatory because of: "the COVID fake emergency"..... One million acres burned (1,500 plus square miles and tens of thousands ordered to evacuate in Oregon in the face of massive wildfires.... Seven now confirmed dead with 60 believed missing..... A man in southern...

Maybe Judge Luttig was right all along. I had the misgivings you’d expect back in late May, when I disagreed with J. Michael Luttig, the stellar scholar and former federal appeals court judge, regarding how the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should handle the Flynn case. At the time, that court’s three-judge panel had not yet heard oral argument on Michael Flynn’s mandamus petition — i.e., Flynn’s request that the panel find that federal district judge Emmet Sullivan was acting lawlessly. Sullivan had not only failed to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn; he...

There is an old adage among lawyers: “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts; if the law is on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.” John Gleeson, the attorney and retired federal judge who was appointed by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to argue that federal prosecutors should not be permitted to dismiss their case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is using a sledgehammer to pound paper. On Wednesday, Gleeson filed a 72-page brief (an oxymoron, to be sure) that was stunningly feeble on...

John Gleeson is the former judge tasked by Emmet Sullivan, the judge in the Michael Flynn case, with talking him into sentencing Flynn in a case that the prosecution has moved to dismiss. One wonders whether any such “talking” is required, other than for the sake of appearances. In any event, Gleeson today filed his brief. He argues that Judge Sullivan should reject the government’s motion and continue the prosecution to sentencing, notwithstanding the prosecutor’s desire to stand down. Gleeson had sketched out this argument in a Washington Post op-ed before Sullivan appointed him to brief the matter. Thus, the...

A former judge appointed to oppose the Justice Department’s request to drop its case against Michael Flynn urged sentencing to move ahead in a court filing Wednesday, arguing the government’s request to dismiss the case has only “pretextual” justification. Ex-Judge John Gleeson said in a DC federal court filing that “[t]he facts surrounding the filing of the Government’s motion constitute clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse. They reveal an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.”--- U.S. District Court Judge Emmet...

WASHINGTON — A retired judge on Wednesday urged a federal court not to allow the Justice Department to dismiss its criminal case against President Donald Trump's former adviser Michael Flynn, citing evidence of a "gross abuse of prosecutorial power." The U.S. district judge hearing the case, Emmet Sullivan, last month tapped John Gleeson to serve as a "friend of the court," after the Justice Department abruptly asked the court to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn, a former national security adviser. The stunning move by the Justice Department followed a pressure campaign by Trump and his conservative allies and came...

Those condemning the DOJ’s decision to drop the charges against Michael Flynn ignore the growing evidence of misconduct by both the FBI and the federal prosecutors. Not quite two weeks ago, Judge Emmet Sullivan threw open the doors of his federal courtroom to the swamp when he invited third parties to pontificate on the propriety of the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Michael Flynn. The next day Sullivan went further: He appointed a former federal judge, John Gleeson, as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, to argue that the government’s motion to dismiss...

A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the judge handling the criminal case of President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, to respond to a request by Flynn’s lawyers to dismiss the case. The order came two days after Flynn’s lawyers asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to drop the case and assign any future court proceedings to another judge. The Department of Justice two weeks earlier made the surprise move to abandon its own prosecution of Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian...

Sullivan should not embark on any contempt proceeding against Michael Flynn. Doing so would be a misuse of his contempt power. Stunning developments in the criminal case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn exploded onto the national scene the past two weeks. First, the government moved to dismiss the case, a one-count plea for allegedly making false statements to the FBI.Then the trial judge, Emmet Sullivan, issued an order permitting people and groups claiming to have an interest in the matter to file briefs about whether he should grant the governmentÂ’s motion. Further, Sullivan appointed a retired federal judge, John Gleeson,...

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan disregarded two controlling precedents from higher courts with his decision to appoint John Gleeson as amicus curiae in the U.S. v. Michael Flynn case this week. Judicial conduct similar to J. Sullivan’s in these prior, far less politically charged cases was roundly and unanimously condemned by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. ... One week ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 9-0 decision, authored by Justice Ginsburg, that took judges to task for similar amicus antics. Her opinion for the Court in U.S. v. Sineneng-Smith upbraided the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit...

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan will consider whether to find former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in criminal contempt of court after the Department of Justice (DOJ) moved last week to drop its prosecution of Flynn for lying to the FBI. Sullivan issued an order Wednesday appointing retired judge John Gleeson as amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) to argue against the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case, as well as to advise the court on whether it should begin contempt proceedings. New Flynn Filing – Judge Sullivan appoints retired Judge John Gleeson as amicus "to present arguments in opposition to...

The U.S. Constitution makes clear that the judiciary has no business second-guessing prosecutorial decisions. That’s what Michael Flynn judge Emmet Sullivan decided to do. On May 13, Judge Emmet Sullivan issued a blatantly biased and unconstitutional order in the long-lasting Michael Flynn criminal case. To preserve the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers, the Department of Justice has no choice now but to seek a writ of mandamus from the D.C. Circuit Court ordering the criminal charge against Flynn dismissed and reassigning the case to another judge. On Tuesday, Judge Sullivan shocked court watchers when he entered...

Most relevant part of article" Sullivan said he was seeking Gleeson's recommendation on whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt charge for perjury because he testified under oath that he was guilty of lying to the FBI but then reversed course and said he had never lied.

The judge overseeing the prosecution of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn won’t immediately grant a U.S request to dismiss the case, saying he’s willing to hear from outsiders who want to weigh in on what should happen next. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington said on Tuesday he would accept friend-of-the-court briefs in response to the dismissal request from Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department, according to the court docket. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents and was cooperating with the investigation before deciding in January to try to withdraw that plea. The judge’s unusual...

A federal judge late Wednesday suggested he may pursue contempt charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn for perjuring himself by abandoning an earlier guilty plea to a charge of lying to the FBI. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan also tapped a retired federal judge to argue against the Justice Department’s motion to drop the charges against Flynn. . . . Judge Gleeson will argue “whether the court should issue an Order to show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury.”

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s order soliciting comments from outsiders opposed to the Justice Department’s motion to throw out charges of lying to FBI agents against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is highly unusual and contradicts earlier rulings by the judge. Sullivan’s order, issued Tuesday, solicits “friend of the court” (“amicus curiae” in legal parlance) briefs from third parties on the request by the Justice Department to halt the prosecution of Flynn. It is particularly odd because Sullivan previously resisted all third-party efforts to intervene in the case. The judge did this a total of 24 times, according to...

The fate of former national security adviser Michael Flynn lies in the hands of a federal judge with an established reputation of being a fiercely independent thinker. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who was appointed to the bench in 1994 by former President Clinton, will determine whether to grant the request by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to drop charges against Flynn, who pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to federal agents about conversations he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. On Tuesday evening, Sullivan pulled a surprise, announcing in a court filing that he would allow interested parties...

(CNN) Sixteen former Watergate prosecutors have told a federal judge he has the authority to sentence former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to prison despite the Justice Department's effort to toss the case. The filings add prominent voices to the backlash against Attorney General William Barr's softening of criminal prosecutions against President Donald Trump's associates. In legal memos sent to the court on Monday and obtained by CNN, the former prosecutors essentially laid out the legal footing they believe Judge Emmet Sullivan has to reject the dismissal request and sentence Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the...

It’s a sure sign of desperation whenever lawyers try to raise President Richard Milhous Nixon from the dead. And so it is that a group of former Watergate special prosecutors this week resurrected the Ghost of Watergate Past in a last-ditch effort to keep alive the federal court case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The gang, adopting the sobriquet “Watergate Prosecutors,” asked permission from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to allow them to intervene in the Flynn case so they can – to put it bluntly – tell his honor how to think and what to do.

Former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman thought he had "seen everything" over the course of his career until a federal judge opened the door Tuesday for legal experts and other outside parties to oppose the Justice Department’s motion to drop the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Appearing on "Fox & Friends," Tolman said he believed Judge Emmet Sullivan's decision was "outrageous" and that the Washington D.C. judge had turned himself into an "activist," willing to set aside rules, ethics, and precedent in favor of partisanship. Although Sullivan did not directly address the Justice Department's motion to drop the...