Attorney General Barr ‘s efforts to make Donald Trump’s guy Michael Flynn’s criminal charges and guilty plea dropped seems in trouble from the judges….
Trump may have to actually pardon the guy….
The DOJ said it no longer believed it could make a case against Flynn, who had by then renounced his earlier guilty plea, and called into question the FBI investigation that led to his interrogation. Flynn had admitted in court in 2017 to lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the Trump administration’s transition period.
After the DOJ moved to drop its prosecution, Sullivan, the judge overseeing Flynn’s case, appointed an outside counsel to present a counter argument and set a briefing schedule to explore whether he should grant the motion.
But before Sullivan could hold the hearing, Flynn’s legal team filed an emergency petition asking the D.C. Circuit to preemptively block any further proceedings and order the charges dropped. A three-judge panel sided with Flynn in a 2-1 ruling, finding that the executive branch has the sole authority to prosecute criminal cases and that Sullivan overstepped his authority in not granting the motion outright….