Former Rep. Trey Gowdy delivered a message to the judge presiding over the case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Sidney Powell, Flynn’s lead attorney, told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures that she expects U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to sign off on the Justice Department’s move on Thursday to dismiss its criminal charges as early as Monday.
Appearing on the show later, Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said the judge will have little choice.
“Let me say this about the judge,” the South Carolina Republican said, “The judge can sit there and not know whether or not he’s going to grant that motion to dismiss. Good luck prosecuting the case, judge. You’ve got to have a prosecutor to prosecute the case. So if the DOJ’s not moving forward on Michael Flynn, I don’t think the judge is going to do it himself.”
Flynn, who briefly served as President Trump’s first national security adviser, pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, but he later declared his innocence and argued he was set up by the FBI.
The Justice Department said in a court filing on Thursday that after reviewing newly disclosed materials, it agreed with Flynn’s attorneys that his interview with the FBI should never have taken place because his conversations with the Russian diplomat were “entirely appropriate.”
Sullivan, a Bill Clinton appointee, rebuked Flynn’s lawyers in December while they argued that Flynn was the victim of an FBI ambush.
Flynn filed to withdraw his guilty plea in January after the Justice Department asked the judge to sentence him to up to six months in prison — afterward, the department said probation would also be appropriate.
