“The SCOTUS unanimously overturned a 9th circuit decision BECAUSE OF THIS VERY THING,”
Perhaps Judge Sullivan is aware of this ruling and has decided to poison the well with this action and kick this over to a higher court to resolve.
Retired Judge Who Will Argue Against Michael Flynn Said Case ‘Reeks of Improper Political Influence’
In an op-ed titled “The Flynn case isn’t over until the judge says it’s over,” Gleeson and two co-authors wrote (original links and emphasis):
There has been nothing regular about the department’s effort to dismiss the Flynn case. The record reeks of improper political influence. Hours after the career prosecutor abruptly withdrew, the department moved to dismiss the indictment in a filing signed only by an interim U.S. attorney, a former aide to Attorney General William P. Barr whom Barr had installed in the position months before.
The department now says it cannot prove its case. But Flynn had already admitted his guilt to lying to the FBI, and the court had accepted his plea. The purported reasons for the dismissal clash not only with the department’s previous arguments in Flynn’s case — where it assured the court of an important federal interest in punishing Flynn’s dishonesty, an interest it now dismisses as insubstantial — but also with arguments it has routinely made for years in similar cases not involving defendants close to the president. And all of this followed a similarly troubling reversal, also preceded by the withdrawal of career prosecutors, in the sentencing of Roger Stone.