The Department of Justice on Thursday told U.S. District
Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington it wants to drop the case against Flynn,
Trump’s former national security adviser, following a pressure campaign by the
Republican president and his political allies.
While judges typically sign off on such motions, Sullivan
could refuse and instead demand answers from the DOJ about who requested the
sudden about-face, said Seth Waxman, a former federal prosecutor now at the law
firm Dickinson Wright.
“If Judge Sullivan wanted to he could conduct an inquiry and
start asking a lot of questions,” said Waxman.
Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who served as an
adviser to Trump during the 2016 election campaign, had been seeking to
withdraw his 2017 guilty plea in which he admitted to lying to the FBI about
interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before
Trump took office.
Flynn’s lawyers, both in court and in public, had argued
that he was ambushed as part of a plot by biased investigators and that the
case should be dismissed. Trump said in March that he was considering a pardon
for Flynn.
The Justice Department said in a court filing on Thursday it
is no longer persuaded that the FBI’s January 2017 interview with Flynn that
led to the charges was conducted with a “legitimate investigative basis” and
does not think Flynn’s statements were “material even if untrue.”
While the judge still has to rule on the submission, elated
supporters of Flynn said there was no way Sullivan could force the department
to prosecute if it did not want to. But the judge could stop Flynn from
withdrawing his guilty plea and impose sentence. In that case, Trump could
pardon Flynn.
The judge is unlikely to sign off on the request as a pro
forma matter, said Channing Phillips, the former acting U.S. attorney for the
District of Columbia during the Obama administration, adding that with Sullivan
“nothing is pro forma.”
“I can guarantee you, he is going to question the
prosecutors,” Phillips said in a phone interview. “He is going to want to
understand exactly the basis for this motion ... You have a new attorney
general. You have a new U.S. attorney. You have new prosecutors who take a
different position. But the facts haven’t changed.”
Sullivan, 72, was appointed to the federal bench in 1994 by
former Democratic President Bill Clinton and is known for an independent
streak, often delivering strong rebukes of conduct he views as unjust.
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