Appeals court denies Michael Flynn and Justice Department's effort to end his case (1 Viewer)

BlueTex · Aug 31, 2020

8-2...hmmm... not even close... Not really a surprise.. What the DOJ was essentially asking is for the courts to be subservient to the DOJ...

A federal appeals court ruled Monday against Michael Flynn and the Justice Department in their request to quickly shut down his criminal case.

The 8-2 decision restores power to a judge to question the Justice Department's moves in the politically divisive case, when Attorney General William Barr dropped charges against President Donald Trump's former national security adviser earlier this year despite twice pleading guilty to lying under oath to lying to the FBI.
Flynn had fought District Judge Emmet Sullivan's decision to ask a third-party lawyer to argue against the Justice Department's dismissal in the case, and his plans to hold a hearing, which has not yet happened.

Michael Flynn and Justice Department's effort to end his case is denied - CNNPolitics

bluesmoke · Aug 31, 2020

Good call. Trump's henchman Barr can't get away with everything. Just enough to really screw things up way wrong. But not everything.

HennyBogan · Aug 31, 2020

“Flynn update - here is the order denying the mandamus.

The case goes back to Judge Sullivan.

The opinion ends with these words:

"we expect the District Court to proceed with appropriate dispatch."

Just read this on Twitter > Techno Fog

Batcat · Aug 31, 2020

bluesmoke said:
Good call. Trump's henchman Barr can't get away with everything. Just enough to really screw things up way wrong. But not everything.

It appears the Deep State is still out to get Flynn for doing nothing illegal. Meanwhile Hillary waltzes away scot-free for putting highly classified information on a improperly secured and unauthorized server. If I would have mishandled classified data and been caught I would have been indicted, prosecuted and sentenced to time in prison.

In the end it looks like Trump will have to pardon Flynn and he will.

Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it
Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it | TheHill

Helix · Aug 31, 2020

It's difficult to not lie to the FBI and then plead guilty to it. It's something that most of us struggle with daily, I'd guess.

Or not.

lwf · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
It appears the Deep State is still out to get Flynn for doing nothing illegal. Meanwhile Hillary waltzes away scot-free for putting highly classified information on a improperly secured and unauthorized server. If I would have mishandled classified data and been caught I would have been indicted, prosecuted and sentenced to time in prison.

In the end it looks like Trump will have to pardon Flynn and he will.

Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it
Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it | TheHill

Flynn pled guilty. Twice.

BlueTex · Aug 31, 2020

What the DOJ is REALLY trying to avoid is Flynn calling the former prosecutors before his bench...

Plasmaball · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
It appears the Deep State is still out to get Flynn for doing nothing illegal. Meanwhile Hillary waltzes away scot-free for putting highly classified information on a improperly secured and unauthorized server. If I would have mishandled classified data and been caught I would have been indicted, prosecuted and sentenced to time in prison.

In the end it looks like Trump will have to pardon Flynn and he will.

Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it
Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it | TheHill

Deep state! Lol what a stupid term

BlueTex · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
It appears the Deep State is still out to get Flynn for doing nothing illegal. Meanwhile Hillary waltzes away scot-free for putting highly classified information on a improperly secured and unauthorized server. If I would have mishandled classified data and been caught I would have been indicted, prosecuted and sentenced to time in prison.

In the end it looks like Trump will have to pardon Flynn and he will.

Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it
Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it | TheHill

Batcat · Aug 31, 2020

lwf said:
Flynn pled guilty. Twice.

Assume you pled guilty to robbing a bank twice but the bank had never been robbed.

Batcat · Aug 31, 2020

BlueTex said:

There was no crime to begin with but the court system should be allowed to continue to persecute not prosecute an innocent man for the sheer legality and fun of it. The court system will not be satisfied until Flynn has to sell the shirt off his back to pay his attorneys fees and then the judge will charge Flynn with contempt of court for appearing shirtless in front of the court.

BlueTex · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
There was no crime to begin with but the court system should be allowed to continue to persecute not prosecute an innocent man for the sheer legality and fun of it. The court system will not be satisfied until Flynn has to sell the shirt off his back to pay his attorneys fees and then the judge will charge Flynn with contempt of court for appearing shirtless in front of the court.

Perhaps Sullivan will just ask the DOJ to explain why they prosecuted this case all the way till sentencing and then abruptly changed their position.

eman623 · Aug 31, 2020

I'm guessing the judges all voted according to whether they were nominated by Republicans or Democrats. This was probably more a political than a judicial decision.

lwf · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
Assume you pled guilty to robbing a bank twice but the bank had never been robbed.

I am not stupid enough to do that.

Batcat · Aug 31, 2020

BlueTex said:
Perhaps Sullivan will just ask the DOJ to explain why they prosecuted this case all the way till sentencing and then abruptly changed their position.

That is possible. It could be because Attorney General Barr is an honest man and seen the prosecution as a travesty of justice.

But there could be other reasons as discussed in this article.

Government lawyer suggests Attorney General Barr had secret reasons for dropping Michael Flynn criminal case
DOJ lawyer suggests AG Barr had secret reasons for dropping Michael Flynn case

Batcat · Aug 31, 2020

lwf said:
I am not stupid enough to do that.

Many people have pled guilty to a crime they didn’t commit when they are put under enough pressure.

As Mueller closed in, pressure mounted on Flynn and family
As Mueller closed in, pressure mounted on Flynn and family - News - The Florida Times-Union - Jacksonville, FL

lwf · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
Many people have pled guilty to a crime they didn’t commit when they are put under enough pressure.

As Mueller closed in, pressure mounted on Flynn and family
As Mueller closed in, pressure mounted on Flynn and family - News - The Florida Times-Union - Jacksonville, FL

Michael Flynn is a retired lieutenant general in the army with a team of high priced lawyers. Do you really think he is stupid enough to plead guilty to a crime because of a little pressure on his family?

It is public record that Michael Flynn committed a crime. The issue isn't whether he committed that crime, it is whether there was any misconduct on the part of investigators that might allow him to get away with it. Apparently there wasn't until they got to the sentencing phase, and then miraculously the DOJ suddenly found some.

pamak · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
Many people have pled guilty to a crime they didn’t commit when they are put under enough pressure.

As Mueller closed in, pressure mounted on Flynn and family
As Mueller closed in, pressure mounted on Flynn and family - News - The Florida Times-Union - Jacksonville, FL

In this case, we have the DOJ which refuses to show the FBI transcripts of Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador which could easily settle the matter regarding if Flynn lied or not to the FBI. All this while the same DOj had no problem to declassify internal memos describing the tactics and debates among the investigators. So, there are obvious doubt standards of DOJ conduct. By the way, even Pence at the time and Trump acted like Flynn lied to them regarding his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

roughdraft274 · Aug 31, 2020

eman623 said:
I'm guessing the judges all voted according to whether they were nominated by Republicans or Democrats. This was probably more a political than a judicial decision.

You would be wrong. 4 were Republican appointed and 2 of those 4 agreed with majority.

Batcat · Aug 31, 2020

lwf said:
Michael Flynn is a retired lieutenant general in the army with a team of high priced lawyers. Do you really think he is stupid enough to plead guilty to a crime because of a little pressure on his family?

It is public record that Michael Flynn committed a crime. The issue isn't whether he committed that crime, it is whether there was any misconduct on the part of investigators that might allow him to get away with it. Apparently there wasn't until they got to the sentencing phase, and then miraculously the DOJ suddenly found some.

What crime did Flynn commit that is on record? Lying to the FBI about a nonexistent crime. It seems to me there was plenty of misconduct on the part of the investigators.

Show me the man and I will find you the crime.
Lavrentiy Beria

lwf · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
What crime did Flynn commit that is on record? Lying to the FBI about a nonexistent crime. It seems to me there was plenty of misconduct on the part of the investigators.

Show me the man and I will find you the crime.
Lavrentiy Beria

Lying to the FBI is not a non existent crime. It is, in fact, a crime.

Batcat · Aug 31, 2020

lwf said:
Lying to the FBI is not a non existent crime. It is, in fact, a crime.

At times it strikes me that those who dislike Trump and the people around him are bound and determined to make damn sure no outsider like Trump ever runs for president again. So what if Flynn did nothing wrong? We got him by his cojones as he LIED to an FBI agent. Oh my God, what a terrible crime. We will have to send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Alan Dershowitz: Did Michael Flynn lie? Or did the FBI act improperly?[/B]
BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/17/18 08:00 AM EST 3,686 THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The media is asking the wrong question about the Michael Flynn case. They are asking whether Flynn lied or the FBI acted improperly, as if the answers to those two questions are mutually exclusive. The possibility that both are true, in that Flynn did not tell the truth and that the FBI acted improperly, is not considered in our hyper partisan world where everyone, including the media, chooses a side and refuses to consider the chance that their side is not perfectly right and the other side not perfectly evil.

The first casualty of hyper partisanship is nuance. So when nuance is condemned as being insufficiently partisan, truth quickly becomes the next casualty. Flynn, during his brief time as national security adviser to President Trump, told FBI agents untruths that are contradicted by hard evidence. Why he did that remains a mystery because, with his vast experience in intelligence gathering, he must have known that the FBI had hard evidence of the conversations he denied having with a Russian diplomat. Be that as it may, this reality does not automatically exclude the possibility that the FBI acted improperly in eliciting untruths from him.

The FBI knew the truth. They had recordings of the conversations. Then why did they ask him whether he had those conversations? Obviously, not to learn whether he had them but, rather, to give him the opportunity to lie to federal agents so that they could squeeze him to provide damaging information against President Trump. If you do not believe me, read what Judge T.S. Ellis III, who presided over the Paul Manafort trial, said to the prosecutors: “You do not really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud. What you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”

Ellis continued: “This vernacular to ‘sing’ is what prosecutors use. What you have got to be careful of is that they may not only sing, they may compose.” Experienced criminal lawyers have seen this phenomenon at work. Most judges, many of whom were former prosecutors, have also seen it. But few have the courage to expose it publicly as Ellis did. Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia Court also has expressed concern regarding federal prosecutorial practices in the investigation.

***snip***

When questioning any suspect, officials should not ask questions whose answers they already know, for the sole purpose of seeing whether the suspect will lie. If they do ask such questions, untruthful answers should not be deemed “material” to the investigation, because the FBI already knew the truth. The FBI should not discourage the suspect from having his lawyer present during the questioning, if a false answer will subject him to criminal liability. Even noble ends do not justify ignoble means, and some of the means used by the special counsel have, indeed, been ignoble.
Alan Dershowitz: Did Michael Flynn lie? Or did the FBI act improperly? | TheHill

pamak · Aug 31, 2020

Batcat said:
What crime did Flynn commit that is on record? Lying to the FBI about a nonexistent crime. It seems to me there was plenty of misconduct on the part of the investigators.

Show me the man and I will find you the crime.
Lavrentiy Beria

The fact that Flynn lied to investigators is not disputed even by Barr. Their argument in the DOJ motion (which was not signed by any career DOJ prosecutor) was not that Flynn did not lie but that his lie was not material to the FBI's investigations which is pretty incredibe considering the fact that the FBI at the time was also into a possible counterintelligence investigation of the possible scenario that Russians were using people close to Trump to gain access to the highest level of the US government. So, any lie that misrepresenting a dialogie between Flynn and the Ryssian ambassador seemed very relevant to the FBI's case/ But heck, the DOJ has the transcripts of the conversation, so they can reveal it to Sulivan and explain why Flynn's lie was not material to the case!

Hatuey · Aug 31, 2020

Plead guilty to a bank robbery that never happened? Twice?

Lmao.

------------------------

Thought had by person at the White House: If you can remember, man, woman, car, camera, TV, you are fit to lead a country and no one has anything to worry about

OpportunityCost · Aug 31, 2020

roughdraft274 said:
You would be wrong. 4 were Republican appointed and 2 of those 4 agreed with majority.

I believe 1 was recused and Rao and Henderson were in dissent separately. If anyone has read the full case and can outline the leanings and rulings, please do so, I have a lot to do today.

Appeals court denies Michael Flynn and Justice Department's effort to end his case (1 Viewer)

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