Should Judge Sullivan Be Disqualified from Flynn Case? An Appeals Court Is Asking
By Andrew C. McCarthy
August 8, 2020 6:30 AM
D.C. Circuit judges seem disturbed by the degree to which Judge Sullivan has exhibited bias in Flynn’s case.
Maybe Judge Luttig was right all along.
I had the misgivings you’d expect back in late May, when I disagreed with J. Michael Luttig, the stellar scholar and former federal appeals court judge, regarding how the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should handle the Flynn case.
At the time, that court’s three-judge panel had not yet heard oral argument on Michael Flynn’s mandamus petition — i.e., Flynn’s request that the panel find that federal district judge Emmet Sullivan was acting lawlessly. Sullivan had not only failed to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn; he had appointed a former federal judge (the overtly anti-Trump John Gleeson) to posit the argument abandoned by DOJ — to wit, that Flynn should proceed to sentencing because he had pled guilty to a false-statements charge, waiving his right to contest the case any further in exchange for the government’s agreement not to file any other charges. Basically, Flynn was asking the appellate court to order Judge Sullivan to dismiss the case.
In a Washington Post op-ed, Luttig contended that “there are ample grounds in the actions the district court has already taken for the appeals court to order that the government’s motion to dismiss be heard by a different judge, and it should so order.â€
more
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/should-judge-sullivan-be-disqualified-from-flynn-case-an-appeals-court-is-asking/