A stunning reversal; they didn't even wait for Judge Sullivan to rule on whether he could withdraw his guilty plea. This is not the end, though. The DOJ prosecutor has withdrawn from all of his cases, not just this one, and there is doubtless more to come.
UPDATE: I want to say that I am really pleased and encouraged by this outcome. Last week's Brady material establishes that the FBI never thought he was guilty of anything, after a very thorough counterintelligence information produced "no derogatory information" in any of the several methodologies employed. They were going to close the case, until they were ordered to hold it open so that a perjury trap could be attempted. If the witnesses about the original 302s are accurate, even that shouldn't have worked because the original 302s said that the agents didn't think Flynn was lying to them, just wrong on a couple of points.
I always liked Flynn because he was willing to take on the intelligence higher-ups on the word of the guys on the ground. An officer that will both listen to and fight for his guys is as good an officer as you can ask. He has been shamefully abused by the government he served long and well. I generally never hope to see anyone sent to prison, as I hate to see a free man reduced to a slave. Those who abused him, though, have spent their whole careers sending other people to prison. They broke the laws they enforced on others. For them, I can only say that it would be a sort of poetic justice if they should have that hammer fall.
20 comments:
This is a good step, but it's insufficient. Flynn needs to be acquitted. Merely dropping the charges, even were his guilty plea withdrawal favorably considered by the presiding judge granted, leaves Flynn exposed to renewed/continued prosecution under these same charges by a Progressive-Democrat President and that DoJ.
Even a pardon wouldn't satisfy the defect, as that would leave the smear intact.
Don't count on the presiding judge, who's amply demonstrated his bias against Flynn with his remarks from the bench, to acquit him along the way of all of this.
In addition to this dropping of charges, Flynn needs to be made fiscally whole by the government paying for his legal costs and the income he lost while he was unable to work effectively as he pursued his case.
Eric Hines
He paid $3.5MM to his first law firm and reportedly owed them $4.5MM more. I hope Sydney Powell is preparing to sue them, and that they'll have the good sense to refund his fees, release him from any outstanding balance, and breathe a sigh of relief that nothing worse happened to them than the complete destruction of their reputation.
Lawyers are allowed to mess up, even incompetent or lazy ones. I agree that a refund from Covington & Burling would be in order. I think, though, that more justice would be done were the government to pay all of those costs, since had they not falsely (falsely, not mistakenly, not in good faith but on wrong information) charged him, Flynn would not have had to engage any lawyers.
On the other hand, it would seem that Covington & Burling badly want separate and sharp sanction if Powell's allegations them are true.
Eric Hines
I do believe the President's re-election campaign is getting started now.
Hopefully this is motivated by justice rather than to help the President's re-election campaign. However, the exposure of how corrupt this prosecution process was will certainly undermine his enemies.
Incompetent and/or lazy lawyers should be relieved if all they risk is their fees, and not consequential damages. That's a pretty straight-up ground for a claim in favor of the disappointed client. They can't guarantee success, but they do owe a duty to avoid laziness or incompetence. In any case, as you say, this appears to go beyond mere lazy incompetence.
Indeed, their agreement to let their client plead guilty on an 'unofficial lawyers agreement' rather than a deal put in writing is criminal, since it kept the sentencing judge from being informed of the terms of the deal; and it also left their client at the mercy of DOJ keeping its word.
I'd want to know a lot more, too, about how they came to recommend that guilty plea. Were they thinking of Flynn, or other clients, or their long-term relationship with DOJ and/or the DNC? The whole thing stinks.
I read that Eric Holder is a partner at that firm. I'd like to know how much interest he took in Flynn's case, and what discussions he might have had with others at the firm about how they should work with DOJ/Mueller.
You read correctly, Grim.
https://www.cov.com/en/professionals/h/eric-holder
Eric Hines
So, the case is now dropped. My guess is that will also mean that a push for substantial reform of FISA or the FBI will be dropped. The outrage is gone, so prosecutors will continue as they have for years.
Perhaps, but perhaps not. The President is pretty angry, and I imagine that reform is a personal priority of his. Barr seems to be doing right on several fronts, so perhaps he will continue to do right here. And there is a prosecutor, Durham, working on this. We may see that hammer fall yet.
I'm with Granite Dad. This is the worst of both worlds. Flynn may be a decent guy in many ways, but he did flat-out lie to Pence and I don't have much sympathy for him. From the start, my concern has been that the government agencies have behaved as if they were in a banana republic, and they should be hammered. But if the pressure is now off, they will gradually, like in 12 months, go back to this sort of FISA abuse with others.
No, the case against Flynn has not been dropped, at least as I write this. DoJ has only entered its motion to drop. The judge has to approve the motion and agree to the drop, just as he must approve Flynn's motion to withdraw his plea before his plea will have been withdrawn. (It may be that successfully dropping the charges makes the plea irrelevant since sentence hasn't been rendered, but....)
Knowledgeable ex-DoJ lawyers say that the judge approving a motion to drop the charges normally is pro forma, but it's not a done deal. Especially when the judge in question has demonstrated so much animus toward Flynn, and so so much anti-Flynn bias, in his from-the-bench commentary.
It's also unclear that Flynn lied to Pence so much as accidentally misled him, however egregiously. Pence has said as much lately. Here, though, it may be just that a generous man is cutting some slack as the FBI's and Obama DoJ's case against Flynn so obviously was falling apart.
Eric Hines
Flynn’s lawyer has withdrawn the request to withdraw the plea to expedite the ending of the case. We’re just waiting on Sullivan.
Sullivan is an interesting character. I wouldn’t want to be the DOJ lawyer who has to face him and explain this.
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women..."
That's for Covington and Burling. It's only $3.5 million, before the treble damages including disbarment of the reviewing partner at the firm.
As to 'having the Government reimburse Flynn'--that's a very bad idea. Any damages should come from the proceeds of the sale of all Van Grack's assets after he is disbarred and convicted of 4-5 serious criminal charges.
Any remaining balance can come from Mueller, who should also be disbarred, shorn of his pension, and imprisoned.
Assistant Village Idiot said... Flynn may be a decent guy in many ways, but he did flat-out lie to Pence...
Pence is, quite naturally, now backing away from that accusation.
The notes from the FBI agents at the time indicate that Flynn's discussion with them contained deviations from the recorded call but not lies about it. Scanning contemporaneous articles, I'm seeing a lot of headlines and paraphrases but no direct quotes from Pence asserting Flynn lied to him.
Looking through a couple of timelines I think a more plausible explanation than a flat out falsehood is that Flynn didn't consider the sanctions to be the main topic of communication. They were an Obama action and there was nothing he could do about them. His sanction discussion with Kislyak was likely directed to asking him to not retaliate against the Trump transition because of them. When Flynn briefed the transition team including Pence he did so in terms of the Russian response, and didn't include any talk of sanctions because he hadn't made any commitments to the Russians regarding them, even if Kislyak had pressed him to do so. It was only later, after Pence and Trump had been questioned about the call and made their denials, that the sanctions portion of the call was leaked by the Obama administration and turned into the central topic of discussion.
One simple straight forward change the Presidenr can make is in two parts: Affirm the Black Lives Matter recommendation that law enforcement officers in the job wear recording / body camera gear; Order, by formal executive order and notice to Congress and the Courts, that FBI agents must and will make audio and video record of all interviews. There may be future instruction abour how when or where such records are releaded to the public. But for sure if the charge is "that guy lied to our guy" then by dang that "crime" needs to be better proved than a piece of paper showing " our guy says that guy lied".
I am working to see the hammer fall on the human cabal evil cockroaches. It is taking longer than just a month however. There is some... Resistance.
You will see a lot more cockroaches hammered than those who went after Flynn, Grim.
I would prefer to see these humans killed in public but... I suppose the Alliance and other factions disagree with my take on things. Which is fine.
They want to do it their way, so to speak, which is at least better than what America was at in 2007-2015.
I'm not letting people forget about Waco 1, Waco 2, Ruby Ridge, JFK assassination, or even Ted Kennedy's shenanigans at that lake.
Counter A: Obey the Law!
Y: The Law... is not as strong as humans think.
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