It has been a long time coming for this despicable and disingenuous miscarriage of justice of an innocent American valiant war hero and patriot. Donald Trump’s former national security adviser and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn is essentially free to go, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia (DC) has ruled, allowing the Department of Justice to drop its case against him.
In a review of Flynn’s case over the last several days, a three-judge panel from the powerful DC circuit court on Wednesday granted the former Trump aide’s petition to intervene in his case after the district court judge presiding over it had moved to prevent the DOJ from abruptly dropping it.
The two Republican-appointed judges voted to allow the DOJ to dismiss the case, while a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama voted to allow the district court judge, Emmet Sullivan, to continue examining why the DOJ decided to drop the case after more than two years of prosecution, delayed hearings, and securing multiple guilty pleas.
General Flynn had been accused of — and previously pleaded guilty to — lying to the FBI about his communications with former Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak in late 2016 and early 2017. According to a statement, “In this case, the district court’s actions will result in specific harms to the exercise of the Executive Branch’s exclusive prosecutorial power,” Judge Neomi Rao wrote for the majority.
Judge Rao, who was appointed by President Trump, appeared to call into question the legitimacy of the 2016 FBI counterintelligence investigation into possible links between Donald Trump’s associates and Russia, which led to General Flynn’s confrontation with the FBI.
In a further point of reference, “If evidence comes to light calling into question the integrity or purpose of an underlying criminal investigation, the Executive Branch must have the authority to decide that further prosecution is not in the interest of justice,” Judge Rao laid out in her decision.
As you will recall, earlier this month, Judge Sullivan appointed another former federal judge to review the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case. That retired judge, John Gleeson, who authored a scathing amicus brief indicating that the DOJ’s decision to drop General Flynn’s case was politically motivated.
The DOJ’s grounds for dismissal of the charges against General Flynn “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 Mr. Trump,” Ex-Judge Gleeson wrote. Following General Flynn’s initially pleaded guilty, he later revoked that plea, arguing that the FBI agents who interviewed him on 24 January 2017 unfairly targeted him due to his political connection with the incoming president.
In the split decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of Flynn and the Trump administration in preventing U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan from exercising his discretion on whether to grant the department’s motion to clear Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to contempt charges in relation to lying to the FBI.
Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general who served as an adviser to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 election campaign, had been seeking to withdraw his 2017 guilty plea in which he admitted to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. in the weeks before Trump took office.
General Flynn’s lawyer renowned attorney Sidney Powell, both in court and in public, argued that he was ambushed as part of the sinister plot by biased Obama’s FBI investigators and by that in and of itself, the case should be dismissed.
Unfortunately, and one of the most damning aspects of the case, was that those statements do not square with Flynn’s previous admissions under oath, Gleeson wrote, providing “more than sufficient evidence” for the government to file additional perjury charges against him. Gleeson, appointed by President Bill Clinton, and obviously picked by Judge Sullivan for his political biased position against Mike Flynn, has previous made the following comments about Flynn and the case.
On June 10th, he stated that the effort to dismiss Flynn’s case was a ‘gross abuse of power” false eleventh-hour disavowal of a plea and a trumped-up accusation of government misconduct constitute obstruction of the administration of justice,” Gleeson wrote.
In the grand scheme of things, which we have witnessed by the Establishment and Political Left, Mike Flynn’s case cuts to the core of President Trump’s message catering to many Americans’ anti-establishment sentiments. Certainly, the President has lambasted as “human scum” the top FBI and DOJ officials probing his associates’ potential ties with Russia.
Shortly after the decision of the DC District Court of Appeals, the president tweeted in support of the decision, calling it “Great”, shortly after the ruling was announced.
Great! Appeals Court Upholds Justice Departments Request to Drop Criminal Case Against General Michael Flynn!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2020
The DOJ said last month it would drop the charges, but Judge Sullivan wanted to scrutinize the decision further. “In this case, the district court’s actions will result in specific harms to the exercise of the executive branch’s exclusive prosecutorial power,” Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by President Trump, wrote in the majority opinion. Further, in an additional note, Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote in her dissent that it “is a great irony that, in finding the District Court to have exceeded its jurisdiction, this Court so grievously oversteps its own”.
The ruling on Wednesday has already angered Democrats, who have accused Attorney General William Barr of improperly meddling in criminal cases to help benefit Trump’s friends and political allies.
We already heard comment to the effect that, ‘it is kind of stunning how much political capital the Trump Team is willing to blow trying to resurrect the traitorous Michael Flynn’s reputation after he PLEADED GUILTY to federal crimes.’ That seems to be the angle Democrats, the political-left and the mainstream media is taking.
Of course, Trump supporters on the other hand took to social media to praise the decision, saying it moved the U.S. closer to justice.
Backing the decision up with the facts. The Trump team if nothing, that in seeking to have the case dismissed, the DOJ said the FBI had insufficient basis to question General Flynn in the first place and that statements he made during the interview were not material to the broader counterintelligence investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Furthermore, the DOJ said that dismissing the case was in the interest of justice, and that it was following the recommendation of a U.S. attorney who had been appointed by Barr to investigate the handling of the Flynn investigation.
It is important to remember, this – the bottom line:
The Democrats are scared to death and fear General Flynn due to the fact that he was illegally surveilled by the Obama administration. The General will now be free to take to the speaking and lecture circuit, cable news tour, he already appeared on both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity on Wednesday.
He most certainly will participate on the Trump 2020 Campaign – both revealing the truth and the facts as he tells his side of the story and what he knows. As a final thought for you – to right the wrong doings and miscarriage of justice by the Obama administration and the Democrats, President Trump should award General Michael Flynn the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Stand by…
Image: Reuters