Welcome to Byron York’s Daily Memo newsletter.
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to receive the newsletter.
NEW WRANGLING IN MICHAEL FLYNN CASE. Remember that the Justice Department decided to dismiss charges against President Trump’s first national security adviser, citing questionable conduct by FBI investigators. But Judge Emmet Sullivan did not want to accept the Department’s decision. Sullivan appointed a retired judge, John Gleeson, to essentially take the place of prosecutors and argue why Sullivan should not go along with DOJ and let the whole thing drop.
Remember also that Gleeson co-wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on May 11 arguing that Sullivan should not agree to the dismissal. Now, Gleeson has filed a briefing in the Flynn case, and it is pretty much the legal version of his Post op-ed, although, to be fair, it sometimes adds a touch of MSNBC-ish commentary.
Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
As Sullivan no doubt wanted, Gleeson pronounces the Justice Department guilty of a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power.” Plus, Gleeson judges Flynn guilty of perjury for pleading guilty and then withdrawing the plea. “Flynn has indeed committed perjury in these proceedings, for which he deserves punishment,” Gleeson writes, “and the Court has the authority to initiate a prosecution for that crime.” In a fit of generosity, Gleeson recommends Sullivan not go ahead with a perjury charge.
Gleeson also insinuates that Flynn was doing something possibly illegal by having a phone conversation with the Russian ambassador during the transition, when Flynn was the incoming national security adviser. But some people with actual foreign policy experience have said that it was not at all improper for Flynn to be talking to the Russian ambassador, or any other foreign official, during that time. That is what incoming national security advisers do. Nor was it improper to suggest that Russia respond only reciprocally to U.S. sanctions.
Gleeson, however, interprets it as possibly serious misconduct, so serious that FBI agents were justified in going to the White House to interview Flynn — never telling him it might have criminal consequences — on January 24, 2017, just four days into the new administration.
Flynn’s argument in response makes a few very simple points. Like: A lot of people have pleaded guilty to a crime only to be exonerated later. It has happened many times. And also: Judge Sullivan is not a prosecutor. “[Sullivan] is not in the Executive Branch and, being an Article III judge, has no authority to gin up his own case or controversy where none exists,” Flynn argues.
In the end, it is astonishing that the Flynn case is still going on. Remember that George Papadopoulos, the minor Trump foreign policy adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, was sentenced to 14 days in prison. (He served 12.) Also remember that special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors were going to recommend no jail time at all for Flynn, the decorated three-star retired Army general. And now remember that Flynn has endured three years of misery and financial ruin in the investigation. Has anyone realized that enough is enough?
