In response to the allegations made by a former federal judge about the Justice Department’s dropping of his case, former National Michael Flynn went on an indignant tear against the decision to appoint the former judge to oppose the dismissal.
He said that the arguments made by retired U.S. District Judge John Gleeson were “an affront to the Rule of Law and a raging insult to the citizens of this country who see the abject corruption in this assassination by political prosecution of General Flynn.”
As for U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, the judge presiding over Flynn’s case, Flynn said Sullivan had “exuviated any appearance of neutrality” by appointing Gleeson to make “these scurrilous arguments.”
Flynn argued that Sullivan had no choice but to immediately dismiss Flynn’s case. He said that delaying the dismissal so that Gleeson could argue against it was a “clear impermissible violation of the separation of powers,” while describing Sullivan’s choice of Gleeson in particular as “appalling.”
Flynn’s fiery response comes amid his efforts to get an appeals court to intervene in Sullivan’s handling of the case. Sullivan appointed Gleeson to serve as a “friend of the court” (also known as an “amicus”) after the Justice Department made the shocking decision last month to seek the case’s dismissal. Last week, Gleeson argued that DOJ’s reasons for wanting the case dropped were pretextual and that effort to get it dismissed amounted to a “gross abuse” of prosecutorial power.
Citing the classic children’s novel “Alice in Wonderland,” Flynn on Wednesday argued that Gleeson was “lost down the rabbit hole on the other side of the looking glass.”
“There never should have been so much as an investigation—much less an assassination by political prosecution of General Flynn—a distinguished patriot of thirty-three years of exemplary service in total devotion to this country,” Flynn’s filing said.
Flynn called Gleeson’s filing a”wrap-up smear” that “elides the reality of the egregious government misconduct” against Flynn.
“The irony and sheer duplicity of Amicus’s accusations against the Justice Department now—which is finally exposing the truth—is stunning,” Flynn’s filings said.
Many of Flynn’s shots at Gleeson were aimed at the fact that he was appointed in the first place.
He said that Sullivan’s request for the briefing was a “clear error on this record. “
“All it has accomplished is degradation of the court itself needless and counterproductive delay, waste of scarce government resources, and dramatic increase of costs to the defendant,” Flynn said.
Flynn, pointing to an op-ed Gleeson wrote just before his appointment, said that it was “appalling” that Sullivan selected him specifically, as Gleeson had “advertised his bias to obtain the appointment.”
Flynn said it was “ludicrous” to believe that precedent allowed for an appointment of any such amicus — “much less the inquiry proposed by Gleeson in his job application for the most-biased-Amicus published in the Washington Post less than 48 hours prior to his appointment.”Elsewhere in his filing, Flynn brought up an appeals court ruling where a Judge Gleeson decision was overturned. The court reversed Gleeson for “aggrandizing his own role in reviewing a deferred prosecution agreement,” Flynn said.
The filing ended with an especially trollish dig at Gleeson. Flynn quoted at length a “federal judge” who praised a U.S. attorney for asking him “to remedy injustices” by dropping two counts against another defendant.
A footnote revealed that Flynn was quoting “Judge John Gleeson applauding U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch.”
Flynn’s response did little to address the substance of Gleeson’s claims about the DOJ reversal. Rather, he pointed to other cases, and said that, “Those who might claim that dismissal post-plea, or the government changing its position is somehow suspicious have not researched the law.”
Read the filing below:
