US Attorney General Bill Barr continues to be the clean-up man for the Mueller indictments, and it looks like the fix is in for Michael Flynn now that Mueller's gone.
Attorney General William Barr on Thursday named Timothy Shea, one of his closest advisers, to be the next top prosecutor in the nation’s capital.
Shea will lead the largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country, which has been historically responsible for some of the most significant and politically sensitive cases the Justice Department brings in the U.S.
He is a senior counselor to the attorney general and was Barr’s right-hand man helping institute reforms at the federal Bureau of Prisons after Jeffrey Epstein’s death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
As the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, Shea would oversee some of the lingering cases from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, along with a number of politically charged investigations. The office is also generally responsible for handling potential prosecutions if Congress finds a witness in contempt.
“Tim brings to this role extensive knowledge and expertise in law enforcement matters as well as an unwavering dedication to public service, reflected in his long and distinguished career in state and federal government,” Barr said in a statement. “His reputation as a fair prosecutor, skillful litigator, and excellent manager is second-to-none, and his commitment to fighting violent crime and the drug epidemic will greatly benefit the city of Washington.”
Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office had been investigating former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s wrath, and the prospect of charges seemed likely in the fall after his lawyers failed to persuade senior Justice Department officials that he didn’t intentionally lie to internal investigators. Little has been said about the case in recent months.
Shea is replacing Jessie Liu, who oversaw the case against Michael Flynn. And wouldn't you know it, the same week a new US Attorney is named, the case against Flynn and his guilty plea suddenly turns into a slap on the wrist.
Just hours after former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn argued in a court filing that prosecutorial misconduct in his case had been so egregious that it warranted dismissing the case entirely, prosecutors backed away from the harsh language they’d used in months past and said probation would be a “reasonable” sentence for Flynn.
Still, they maintained, sentencing guidelines allowed for the former Trump official to serve up to 6 months in prison for lying to the FBI.
It was just the latest bizarre back-and-forth in the government’s years-long effort to pin Flynn for lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States just before the Trump administration began. Flynn’s turn against prosecutors has been fueled by his new defense team, hired last June and led by the prominent critic of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Sidney Powell.
In a lengthy set of filings Wedensday, Powell argued that prosecutors as well as Flynn’s old lawyers had hopelessly biased the case against him. The only answer, she said, was for Judge Emmett Sullivan to throw out the case entirely.
That followed another motion, earlier this month, to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea. (Judge Sullivan, as it happens, has not been especially sympathetic to Flynn’s antagonistic and at times conspiratorial accusations against the government.)
In its sentencing memo Wednesday, prosecutors acknowledged Flynn’s motion to withdraw his plea — though they noted the several times in writing and in court that he had acknowledged his guilt — and said they would respond to it in a separate filing of their own.
“The task at hand is to impose an appropriate sentence for the defendant’s criminal conduct in lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador,” they said.
On that front, the sentencing memo was slightly different than the memo prosecutors filed earlier this month.
”In that filing, they pointed to other cases of defendants who had lied to the FBI and served prison sentences. No mention was made of a potential probation sentence. And though they mentioned Flynn’s extensive record of public service, that was followed by the caveat that Flynn’s national security past “should have made him particularly aware of the harm caused by providing false statements to the government.
Again just a few weeks ago, Flynn was facing serious prison time for his guilty plea. Now he's facing probation if anything, and the very real possibility that the Barr Justice Department will drop the case entirely.
And this is going on while Trump's impeachment trial is happening.
If you think this rotten mess is bad now, wait until next week when a fully unleashed Trump starts taking open revenge and committing open acts of corruption in a nation that no longer has a guaranteed way to contain him.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment