Emmet Sullivan shows reluctance to let justice department drop prosecution of ex-Trump aide
Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters
A US judge has signalled reluctance to allow the Department of Justice to drop its criminal prosecution of Michael Flynn, tasking a retired judge with advising on whether the former Trump administration official should face an additional criminal contempt charge for perjury.
In a short written order, the US district judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington asked John Gleeson, a former federal judge in New York, to present arguments in the case as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court.
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.
Sullivan also said he wanted Gleeson to make the case for why a motion to dismiss the Flynn case filed by the DoJ last week should be rejected. A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment.
The DoJ’s surprising decision on 7 May to drop its case against Flynn came after growing pressure from Donald Trump and his political allies who repeatedly accused the FBI of improprieties in how it handled the investigation.
Until then, the DoJ had defended the FBI’s actions in the case.
Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who served as an adviser to Trump during the 2016 campaign, pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia’s US ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump took office.
However, later in the case he switched lawyers and tactics, accusing the FBI of tricking him and seeking to have his guilty plea withdrawn.
The attorney general, William Barr, revealed in February he had tapped Jeffrey Jensen, a federal prosecutor in Missouri, to work alongside career prosecutors to help review the case.
Jensen ultimately recommended that Barr abandon the case, which the DoJ did in a filing on 7 May, saying that the FBI’s Flynn interview on 24 January 2017 that underpinned the charges was conducted without a “legitimate investigative basis” and that Flynn’s statements were not “material even if untrue”.
Since then, Barr has been criticised by Democrats and former career prosecutors, who said his actions amounted to improper political meddling and harm the integrity of the DoJ.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
