A U.S. Appeals Court has ordered the dismissal of the case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in a 2-1 ruling that the Justice Department's decision to abandon the case against Flynn settles the matter, even though Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
It was a big win for the Justice Department as Democrats question whether it has become too politicized and Attorney General William Barr too quick to side with the president. The House is holding a hearing Wednesday on the topic. The decision also avoids a protracted court fight that would have delved deeper into the reasoning for the department's extraordinary dismissal request.
Trump tweeted just moments after the ruling became public.
Last month, Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed a retired judge to challenge the U.S. Justice Department's abrupt effort to dismiss the case, according to reports.
Sullivan’s appointment of former prosecutor John Gleeson was seen as a major curve ball in the case the DOJ had pursued in court since 2017, when Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Trump and his supporters have embarked on a long campaign for Flynn’s name to be cleared, while Flynn has sought to withdraw his guilty plea.
Flynn was the only White House official charged in Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI days after the president’s January 2017 inauguration about conversations he had had during the presidential transition period with the Russian ambassador.
The Justice Department moved to dismiss the case in May as part of a broader effort by Barr to scrutinize, and even undo, some of the decisions reached during the Russia investigation, which he has increasingly disparaged.
In its motion, the department argued that Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador — in which they discussed sanctions the Obama administration imposed on Russia for election interference — were appropriate and not material to the underlying counterintelligence investigation. The department also noted that weeks before the interview, the FBI had prepared to close its investigation into Flynn after not finding evidence of a crime.
But Gleeson called the Justice Department’s request a “gross abuse” of prosecutorial power and accused the government of creating a pretext to benefit an ally of the president.
Wednesday's 2-1 opinion was authored by Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, and joined by Karen LeCraft Henderson, who had asked skeptical questions of lawyers for Flynn and the Justice Department during arguments earlier this month.
In a dissent, Judge Robert Wilkins wrote, “It is a great irony that, in finding the District Court to have exceeded its jurisdiction, this Court so grievously oversteps its own.”
About the Author
