Michael Flynn is asking that the federal judge in his case recuse himself from further proceedings, after a fiery hearing last week in which the former national security adviser’s attorney said that the case against him was actually part of a “coup” attempt against President Trump.
“The court’s contempt and disdain for the defense was palpable throughout the hearing on September 29, 2020, including when defense counsel made an oral motion for his immediate disqualification, which he refused to allow even to be fully stated for the record,” argued Sidney Powell, an attorney for Flynn.
Powell accused District Judge Emmett Sullivan for the District of Columbia in the filing of “actively litigating against [Flynn],” saying that Sullivan’s presence in the case was a “national scandal undermining confidence in the impartiality of the
federal judicial system and faith in the rule of law writ large.”
The Justice Department made the unprecedented decision in May to move to drop charges against Flynn, repudiating its own theory of the case and siding with right-wing conspiracy theories alleging that Flynn is the victim of a late Obama administration plot to sabotage President Trump.
Since then, Sullivan appointed former federal judge John Gleeson as an amicus to argue against the government’s motion in court. After the case spent the summer on appeal, Sullivan was allowed to continue with the proceedings, resulting in a hearing last week.
Powell said at the hearing that she would file a motion for Sullivan to recuse, which he is unlikely to grant.
But in the Wednesday filing, she went further, implying that Sullivan himself was part of the conspiracy and saying that “it goes all the way to the Obama oval office.”
Powell cited the judge’s role in the case of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), where Sullivan examined prosecutorial misconduct in the matter that led to the DOJ withdrawing its charges.
“There are only two material differences between the government misconduct here and that in the Stevens case. The first is that the government misconduct against General Flynn is far worse—and it goes all the way to the Obama oval office,” Powell wrote. “The second is the name of the Attorney General. As the court noted on the record last week, ‘Eric’ moved to dismiss the wrongful Stevens case—with prejudice—and the court granted it immediately on a two-page motion.”
Powell went on in the filing to cite Sullivan’s “antipathy for defense counsel Sidney Powell.” She also said that it was “improper for the court to seek to draw public attention to” a letter that Powell sent to Attorney General Bill Barr last year asking him to toss out Flynn’s case.
“The bias of the court and accompanying assumptions are so thoroughly
accepted on ‘the Left’ that the bias does not even register to them,” Powell added. “Yet it is just that—a bias with no basis in anything but prejudice against another political party or persons.”
She went on to conclude that Sullivan’s bias was “terrifying” and constituted “his own prosecution of General Flynn.”
Read the filing here:
