AP Headline: “Ex-judge says push to dismiss Flynn case is ‘abuse of power'” … Don’t Worry: It’s Fake News. AP Is Misleading You, As It Does Every Day.

It is true, as the headline said, that an “ex-judge” has claimed the DOJ’s decision to dismiss the Flynn charges was a grotesque abuse of power.

A former federal judge appointed to review the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn has found that the government’s request should be denied because there is “clear evidence of a gross abuse of prosecutorial power.

“Former U.S. District Judge John Gleeson said in a filing Wednesday that the government “has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the President.”

So that’s the official word, huh? AP’s headline sure wants you to take that as authoritative.

Here’s what AP’s headline fails to mention, and which the article itself waits to tell you, and then downplays: The “ex-judge” in question is John Gleeson, the judge who wrote the Washington Post editorial demanding that Flynn be jailed, and the same person that Noted Low-IQ Charity Hire Emmet Sullivan appointed as his own personal prosecutor.

So it seems as if we already knew John Gleeson’s unhinged, partisan opinion, right? This isn’t new news. This isn’t some independent judge asked by the circuit court to make some initial findings.

This is the Personal Prosecutor that Sullivan has sought to hire to prosecute Flynn, using taxpayer funds for the purpose of private vengeance.

Another point: Robert Barnes (of @BarnesLaw) pointed something out on Viva Frei (a Canadian law-vlogger who either leans right or leans fair, but who, being Canadian, often has to guess or surmise as regards the exact details of American legal practice).

Barnes said the reason Emmet Sullivan hired a lawyer to represent him in front of the DC Court of Appeals isn’t just because he’s an idiot who relies entirely on the advice of his four young, inexperienced clerks, and feared being exposed as an incompetent fool in the declining years of his already-low mental acuity.

Oh, that was certainly one reason, Barnes said. But there was another:

Judges can’t leak to the press, he said. I assume he means that judges face serious penalties for leaking to the press about a case in progress, because I’m pretty sure judges do leak.

So I guess he meant: Judges can’t safely leak to the press.

But their personal lawyers can. Indeed, that’s half the function of a lawyer in a high profile case.

Barnes says that Sullivan made sure he (improperly) used taxpayer funds to rent his own mouthpiece because he wanted her to be able to leak his claims to the press.

Now, John Gleeson is not the lawyer that Sullivan hired to defend him in front of the DC Circuit; John Gleeson is the partisan WaPo screed writer that Sullivan attempted to hire as his persona prosecutor for private vengeance.

But I imagine the idea is the same: Sullivan can’t leak his deranged view of his limitless Red Queen powers to the press, so his buddy and would-be personal vigilante does so for him.

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