While there is no set time limit for a vote, we should know the answer within about 10 days. And if we haven’t heard by then, here's what it likely means. //

Judge Emmett Sullivan has no business seeking a rehearing by the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals of the panel decision granting Michael Flynn’s petition for mandamus. Both Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, and the U.S. government hammered that point yesterday in their answers to Sullivan’s petition for rehearing en banc.

Powell had sought mandamus from the D.C. Circuit after Sullivan refused to dismiss the criminal charge against her client. After uncovering exculpatory evidence Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team had withheld from Flynn’s defense attorneys, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the single charge of lying to the FBI that the special counsel’s office had levied against Flynn in late 2017. //

That evidence included notes establishing the FBI had no legitimate investigative purpose to question Flynn about his telephone conversations with the Russian ambassador and suggested instead that the ambush interview provide a perjury trap to out Flynn from the Trump administration. Even then, as revealed by additional notes disclosed last week, the agents who questioned Flynn did not believe he had lied during the interview.