The Flynn Case as the modern analog to the Dreyfus Affair

From J’Accuse: Judge Sullivan marches on and invents his own judicial procedures by NewNeo.

General Flynn has been the illuminating case of Deep State evil and the serious effort by the prior administration to undermine the smooth transfer of power from one administration to the next. The entire past three and half years have been a continuing effort to execute the plan of the the last three months of the prior administration.

Fortunately, reality has been peeking through. There was no Russia-Trump Collusion, there were no Logan Act infringements, there was no merit to the Steele Dossier, a mere manufactured oppo research document of fiction, provable falsehoods, and prurient gossip. Bought and paid for by members in the orbit of the prior administration.

The FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS all became instruments of political harassment of American citizens exercising their free rights.

Why General Michael Flynn became such a target remains unclear. Was he just another scalp in the effort to attrit the new administration's appointments? Was it payback for Flynn's skepticism of the prior administration's jewell, the Iran Treaty? Was it that Flynn's prior roles gave him visibility into the FBI, CIA, NSA, and IRS abuses? We are still a long way from clarity but all seem contributive to the targeting.

Bankrupted from illegal law-fare, blackmailed into a false confession to a non-crime, railroaded by both the Deep State and his own prior defense attorneys, Flynn appears Odysseus-like to have escaped the clutches of the prior administration and the Deep State. Charges are dropped. Mueller and Horowitz seem to exonerate him. There never was any there there.

And then, in a cheesy, lazy homage to every lame horror thriller movie, just as the protagonist seems clear of all trouble, the undead Deep State rises to have one more go at him.

Judge Sullivan decided that even though the Department Justice no longer thought there was a charge to answer and even though there are multiple investigations underway as to who brought such a disreputable case in the first place, Sullivan of the undead legal case decides that the court should prosecute on his own order.

Or at least that was what it appeared like to me. I am not a lawyer. I have been involved in various court cases as an expert witness but that doesn't accord any degree of expertise.

But a passing knowledge of history and comparative judicial systems is enough to raise some obvious concerns. This looks like Judge Sullivan has suddenly become confused, thinking he is a French investigating magistrate rather than an American US District Judge.

It makes a mockery of that famous intro into the 20 year documentary series exploring the American judicial system - Law & Order: "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: The police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories."

DUN DUN

Now they are going to have to modify the intro: "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by three separate yet equally important groups: The police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders, and random judges who take it into their minds to pursue political vendettas.

That was my modest interpretation. Jonathan Turley, more stately, seems to concur. But other than him, the mainstream media seemed to find nothing awry with Sullivan's actions, even cheering them.

J’Accuse: Judge Sullivan marches on and invents his own judicial procedures by NewNeo seems to share my concerns.

She makes the interesting analogy to the Dreyfus Affair, a shameful event in which the French State manipulated the courts to produce the desired guilty verdict of an innocent man. Seems reasonably apt.

On Sullivan's appointment of John Gleeson as Sullivan's cat's paw:

It is true that, as described there, John Gleeson is indeed acting as a “court appointed outside lawyer enlisted to prosecute the case despite the DOJ withdrawal motion.” But that is the “unprecedented” part. An amicus curiae does not have that function. You can read this article by Andrew C. McCarthy on how odd it was that Sullivan would ask for amicus briefs in this case, and that was before Gleeson was appointed and it became clear the plan was that he was going to act as a sort of junior judge in a new trial, or at least new discovery for a new trial under new charges (perjury for withdrawing a plea, another previously unheard-of charge). Also please take a look at this article about a recent unanimous SCOTUS ruling that Sullivan is flouting here.

As astonishing as Sullivan's actions is his appointee.

The Conservative Treehouse author of that first article I linked, “sundance,” starts out by saying “This is so far outside the bounds of traditional judicial activity it is unprecedented.” Indeed. But although I also looked at a number of “straight” news articles on the move by Sullivan and Gleeson (the latter of whom had already signaled his anti-Flynn stance in an op-ed written before his appointment), none of them even mentioned the unusual nature of the proceedings.

A federal judge assumes the role of a French investigating magistrate then delegates that responsibility to an attorney with a declared antipathy to the formerly accused. Dreyfus indeed.

And most astonishing? That the mainstream media has no cognitive context for seeing anything of this. They don't see the parallels to Dreyfus. They don't see the threat to the Constitution of one branch seeking to seize the responsibilities of another. They don't see the targeting of a free citizen by a former administration to undermine the new administration or to try and hide the malfeasance of the earlier administration as anything unusual. They don't see dropping of false charges for actions which were never a crime as the proper thing to do.

Astonishing.