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Ex-Fed Prosecutor: 'Unhinged' Flynn Judge Invites 'Anti-Trump Group Therapy Sesson'

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Call it Trump Derangement Syndrome – the Judicial Edition.

The decision Tuesday by D.C. Circuit Judge Emmet Sullivan to delay a final decision in the case of President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor is just the latest twist in a case in a three-year-old case that should never have been brought in the first place, former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said Wednesday.

And it was a decision by a judge who’s been “unhinged” on the case from the get-go.

On Tuesday, Sullivan announced he would accept friend-of-the-court briefs, legally known as amicus briefs, before rendering a decision on the Justice Department motion.

The announcement disgusted conservatives who have long seen Flynn as a casualty of the war against the Trump administration that started even before Trump took the oath of office.

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In an “America’s Newsroom” interview with Fox News’ Ed Henry, McCarthy summed up Tuesday’s surprise announcement about the case against retired Gen. Michael Flynn in scornful terms.

“What happened here, Ed, is there is a bunch of lawyers … who call themselves the Watergate prosecutors, and they figured if the Rolling Stones still go on tour, why shouldn’t they get the band back together?

Do you think this judge's decision was politically motivated?

“And they’ve been doing that since Trump came to office, trying to get him impeached.

“And they thought it’d be a great idea to file an amicus brief to rant against Trump and against Flynn in connection with this case, even though it’s a criminal case where you typically don’t entertain amicus briefs because it’s the state or the government against the individual and the issues are very straightforward.

“Judge Sullivan, who has been so unhinged on this case that he originally characterized it as a ‘treason’ case, decided this was just a peachy idea so now he’s inviting basically an anti-Trump group therapy session. All the lawyers out there who want to file amicus briefs are invited to do that.”

Check out the interview here:



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Even casual observers of the Flynn case know that it has been anything but straightforward, from the time Trump opponents claimed the career Army officer as their first scalp in the #Resistance war with Flynn’s resignation in February 2017.

Flynn pleaded guilty that same year to a single count of lying to the FBI during an ambush interview at the White House in the first days of the Trump administration. But after a series of sentencing delays, he eventually withdrew the plea in January when his new attorney, Sidney Powell, started taking the government’s case apart, both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion.

Last week, the Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr announced it was moving to dismiss the charge against Flynn, effectively ending the injustice once and for all.

And then Sullivan issued his call for amicus briefs, even though he had previously — and in no uncertain terms — ruled against accepting such briefs in the Flynn case.

As Powell noted in her filing opposing Sullivan’s decision, the judge had rejected friend-of-the-court briefs 24 times, writing on one of the rejections on Dec. 20, 2017:

“The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure do not provide for intervention by third parties in criminal cases. The Court recognizes that the movant sincerely believes that he has information to share that bears on this case, and that, understandably, he wishes to be heard. Options exist for a private citizen to express his views about matters  of public interest, but the Court’s docket is not an available option.”

In Judge Sullivan’s courtroom, that was then, apparently. And this is now.

Conservatives who have been watching the case were not happy.

For all the anger Sullivan has sparked, McCarthy appeared calm about the future prospects of the case.

Besides being a conservative commentator and author, he knows the justice system firsthand as a veteran prosecutor who, at the age of 36, successfully handled the government’s case against the terrorists behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. (The New York Times applauded him for that back in 1995; it would be interesting to see how the Gray Lady would feel about it now.)

He doesn’t see Sullivan’s current delay affecting the ultimate outcome, though in a column published on National Review on Wednesday, he made his disgust with Sullivan’s “travesty” of a decision clear.

“It will make no difference in the end, but it will just drag the process out,” he told Henry.

Trump Derangement Syndrome has been doing a lot of that the past three years as Democrats and their media allies have thrown up one roadblock, one ambush, one sneak attack after another at the president who, before the coronavirus crisis hit, had rejuvenated the American economy and world standing to levels Democrats couldn’t dream of.

It’s what makes Trump’s re-election in November so vital – a chance to finish what has been started, and put Trump Derangement Syndrome in its place.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
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