At the end of the day, Judge Henderson may decide, based on the long and sordid history of this case, that it isn’t just Judge Sullivan’s amicus who is intemperate.Over the course of nearly two hours, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals quizzed attorneys for Michael Flynn, the Department of Justice, and Judge Emmet Sullivan. The questions posed during oral argument suggest the court is hesitant to order Sullivan to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn — at least at this time. How the court will rule, however, likely rests in the hands of Judge Karen Henderson.

An experienced prosecutor always protects his case from preventable errors that can get a conviction reversed on appeal. Van Grack didn’t know enough to do that. //

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skeptic62
an hour ago
The Flynn prosecutors did not care that a conviction would easily be overturned; that would only happen years after Trump had been removed from office.

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Static21 skeptic62
14 minutes ago
I agree. The whole purpose was to keep Flynn under wraps as to not let him talk on any of Obama's negligence in dealing with Iran & the total defeat of ISIS, which anyone w/ a brain knows that is not the case. Its been said many times with Flynn being the head of DIA, he definitely knows where all Obama's bodies are buried.

Consider the effort made by Judge Gleeson to insist that Ammidown pretty much decides all questions with respect to the question on which Judge Sullivan’s authority rests.

But how badly reasoned and constructed the Ammidown decision actually is as a piece of legal work leads to the conclusion that Ammidown is the basis upon which Judge Sullivan’s authority “Rests in Peace.”

The court-made doctrine that makes it very difficult to sue over excessive force by police is under the microscope.

I’ll start with a “brief” primer on the case so far, and a short introduction into a key issue raised by the Government brief. //

The Department of Justice filed an Appellate Brief in support of the Petition for Writ of Mandamus filed by General Flynn on the same day that Judge Sullivan filed his response to the Circuit Court’s order that he do so. //

moving expeditiously by way of a Writ avoids “an unwarranted impairment” by Judge Sullivan of the Executive Branch’s “performance of its constitutional duties.”

At its core what this argument advances is the idea that when the Executive Branch, while executing its constitutional duties to see that that the laws are faithfully executed and enforced, comes across information establishing that an ongoing enforcement action is mistaken or amounts to an injustice, the Executive must move with all due haste to bring the enforcement action to an end.

The Justice Department has taken a position in a legal filing with the Judicial branch that it is no longer convinced that Gen. Flynn committed a crime, and it is certain that it would not be able to prove any such crime beyond a reasonable doubt if it attempted to do so in a trial.

Yet based on Justice Department conduct up to the date of that determination, Gen. Flynn remains a defendant in a criminal case pending in United States District Court. As such, the Justice Department has an ethical obligation – and an obligation under its own internal policies (explained later) – to move without delay to bring an end to that pending matter.

What Judge Sullivan proposes to do is an “unwarranted impairment” of the Executive Branch’s effort to fulfill its constitutional obligations to Gen. Flynn. //

The course of action proposed by Judge Sullivan is unwarranted in terms of the substance, that the process he proposes to follow is an interference with Executive branch functions in violation of the Separation of Powers doctrine.

Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, leaves the federal court following a status conference with Judge Emmet Sullivan, in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2019. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Yesterday the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued an Order setting oral argument on the Petition for Mandamus filed by Gen. Michael Flynn, seeking to have the Circuit Court “mandate” | <a class="moretext" href="https://www.redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/06/05/dc-circuit-court-does-judge-sullivan-no-favors-in-order-setting-oral-argument/">Read More »</a>

The church argued before the justices that the COVID-19 restrictions in California treated nonreligious entities more favorably than religious ones.

I tweeted yesterday that I was going to try to resist the urge to blast out “hot takes” on the submission by Judge Sullivan in response to the Circuit Court’s Order connected to Gen. Flynn’s Petition for a Writ of Mandamus. I did post a few thoughts as I made my way through the document, and later I gave my “30,000 foot” view of the filing.

The games continue.

The newly released transcripts should cause Judge Emmet Sullivan to realize the error of his way and immediately dismiss the charges against Michael Flynn. //

The transcripts released Friday make clear that Flynn’s only request to Kislyak concerned the expulsion of the Russian diplomats and not the sanctions instituted by then-President Obama’s executive order. Yet Mueller’s team charged Flynn with lying to the FBI about his discussion with Kislyak about sanctions. //

Not only did the special counsel’s office and then Van Grack, a holdover from the Mueller team, misrepresent to the federal court the substance of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak, the special counsel repeated these lies to the American public.

Why treat places of worship differently? //

Late last night, the Supreme Court handed down an Order in the case of South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom. The Church had sought injunctive relief from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order limiting attendance in places of worship to the lesser of 25% capacity or 100 people.

In the Order denying the injunction, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh penned a dissent, joined by the other three conservative justices.

The primary distinction drawn between the majority and the dissent is their characterization of places of worship in relation to other secular gathering places. The majority likens churches and other places of worship to such secular gatherings as “lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.” Roberts draws a distinction between these gatherings/venues, such as “grocery stores, banks, and laundromats,” noting that in those are venues “in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.” //

Justice Kavanaugh notes that the State could simply impose the same (reasonable) occupancy caps across the board. But because it chose to impose stricter limits on certain venues, including houses of worship, while taking a looser approach with supermarkets, restaurants, and offices, the State appears to be discriminating against religion without providing a compelling justification for doing so

Declassified Flynn transcripts released on Friday contradict key claims made against Flynn by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is calling on the DOJ and Treasury Department to investigate whether Twitter is violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. //

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is calling on the Justice Department and the Treasury Department to conduct a criminal investigation into Twitter probing whether the tech giant is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran by providing Iranian leaders an online platform. //

“I believe that the primary goal of (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act) and sanctions law should be to change the behavior of designated individuals and regimes,” Cruz wrote. “But when a company willfully and openly violates the law after receiving formal notice that it is unlawfully supporting designated individuals, the federal government should take action.” //

Twitter did not respond when asked why it has failed to register as an agent of the foreign governments whose propaganda it publishes unfiltered.

Having already taken several unusual steps, the court must follow the rule of law.

Judge Fred Biery’s order that Texas state officials allow mail-in voting for all eligible voters reads like a manifesto from a wannabe philosopher-king. //

Biery brushed aside the concerns of state officials over potential voter fraud, stating in colorful language, “The Court finds the Grim Reaper’s scepter of pandemic disease and death is far more serious than an unsupported fear of voter fraud in this sui generis experience.” He went on to say, “Indeed, if vote by mail fraud is real, logic dictates that all voting should be in person.”

Hold on.

He acknowledges that between 2005 and 2018, there were 73 prosecutions in Texas for voter fraud, but he buries in the endnotes that “[a]lmost half of [these fraud] cases involved the improper use of absentee ballots, where voter fraud occurs most often.” That’s consistent with information compiled by The Heritage Foundation in its election fraud database.

So, if half of the recorded voter fraud incidents in Texas involved absentee ballots, and research shows that is where voter fraud most often occurs, why reject the state’s concerns that incidents of voter fraud will increase when the use of absentee ballots increases? //

This lone federal judge wrote that “‘We the People’ get just about the government and political leaders we deserve, but deserve to have a safe and unfettered vote to say what we get.” He’s right. But it raises the question: Who voted for him?

Biery’s job was to call balls and strikes. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened here.

In a rare move, a three-judge panel ordered the judge in the criminal case against Flynn to respond to his attorney's petition for a writ of mandamus.

A former federal prosecutor breaks it down.

Private industries have helped drop the cost of launching rockets, satellites and other equipment into space to historic lows. That has boosted interest in developing space—both for mining raw materials such as silicon for solar panels and oxygen for rocket fuel, as well as potentially relocating polluting industries off the Earth. But the rules are not clear about who would profit if, for instance, a U.S. company like SpaceX colonized Mars or established a moon base.

Emmet G. Sullivan, the judge in the case of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is refusing to let William Barr’s Justice Department drop the charge. He’s even thinking of adding more, appointing a retired judge to ask “whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury.”

Pundits are cheering. A trio of former law enforcement and judicial officials saluted Sullivan in the Washington Post, chirping, “The Flynn case isn’t over until a judge says it’s over.” Yuppie icon Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and the New Yorker, one of the #Resistance crowd’s favored legal authorities, described Sullivan’s appointment of Judge John Gleeson as “brilliant.” MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said Americans owe Sullivan a “debt of gratitude.”

One had to search far and wide to find a non-conservative legal analyst willing to say the obvious, i.e. that Sullivan’s decision was the kind of thing one would expect from a judge in Belarus. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley was one of the few willing to say Sullivan’s move could “could create a threat of a judicial charge even when prosecutors agree with defendants.” //

The acts at issue are calls Flynn made to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December 29th, 2016 in which he told the Russians not to overreact to sanctions. That’s it. The investigation was about to be dropped, but someone got the idea of using electronic surveillance of the calls to leverage a case into existence.

In a secrets-laundering maneuver straight out of the Dick Cheney playbook, some bright person first illegally leaked classified details to David Ignatius at the Washington Post, then agents rushed to interview Flynn about the “news.”

“The record of his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak had become widely known in the press,” is how Deputy FBI chief Andrew McCabe put it, euphemistically. “We wanted to sit down with General Flynn and understand, kind of, what his thoughts on that conversation were.”

A Laurel-and-Hardy team of agents conducted the interview, then took three weeks to write and re-write multiple versions of the interview notes used as evidence (because why record it?). They were supervised by a counterintelligence chief who then memorialized on paper his uncertainty over whether the FBI was trying to “get him to lie” or “get him fired,” worrying that they’d be accused of “playing games.” After another leak to the Washington Post in early February, 2017, Flynn actually was fired, and later pleaded guilty to lying about sanctions in the Kislyak call, the transcript of which was of course never released to either the defense or the public.

Warrantless surveillance, multiple illegal leaks of classified information, a false statements charge constructed on the razor’s edge of Miranda, and the use of never-produced, secret counterintelligence evidence in a domestic criminal proceeding – this is the “rule of law” we’re being asked to cheer. //

On the campaign trail in 2016, I watched Democrats hand Trump the economic populism argument by dismissing all complaints about the failures of neoliberal economics. This mistake was later compounded by years of propaganda arguing that “economic insecurity” was just a Trojan Horse term for racism. These takes, along with the absurd kneecapping of the Bernie Sanders movement, have allowed Trump to position himself as a working-class hero, the sole voice of a squeezed underclass.

The same mistake is now being made with civil liberties. Millions have lost their jobs and businesses by government fiat, there’s a clamor for censorship and contact tracing programs that could have serious long-term consequences, yet voters only hear Trump making occasional remarks about freedom; Democrats treat it like it’s a word that should be banned by Facebook (a recent Washington Post headline put the term in quotation marks, as if one should be gloved to touch it). Has the Trump era really damaged our thinking to this degree?