“He has zero legal authority to do that.”
I believe that the ability of courts to hire Special Prosecutors EXPIRED about 20 or 30 years ago. So I agree, he has no authority to do such.
Did courts ever have that authority? Prosecution is a pure executive branch power. I think they had to be appointed by the AG even back then.
I cannot imagine the court ever had the power to appoint a prosecutor and pursue a “crime” as they saw it.
The judge in the Flynn case did it after the DOJ dropped the charges.
(I believe that the ability of courts to hire Special Prosecutors EXPIRED about 20 or 30 years ago. So I agree, he has no authority to do such.)
Not true. It happened in the Michael Flynn case.
(The DOJ finally decided not prosecute Flynn after an independent review, but when they dropped the charges, Judge Emmett Sullivan refused to dismiss the case! Instead, Sullivan appointed an outside lawyer, John Gleeson, to argue against dismissal of the case. Gleeson is a former federal judge of the same ideological stripe as Judge Boasberg. So judge Sullivan became both the judge and the prosecutor.
Flynn appealed and a panel of the D.C. appellate reversed him, ordering him to dismiss the case. He wouldn’t, and the DC court of appeals eventually sent it back for a final decision, but Sullivan refused to dismiss the case and refused to render a final, appealable judgment. He simply was not going to allow Flynn to go free. )