For those following the increasingly curious case against General Mike Flynn, events took another unusual turn yesterday as Special Counsel Robert Mueller -with agreement from all parties- filed a motion for a protective order to seal documents. These are documents compelled on behalf of the defense, by Judge Emmet Sullivan, prior to sentencing.
On November 30th, 2017, Mike Flynn signed a guilty plea; ostensibly admitting lying to investigators. The plea was accepted by Judge Ruben Contreras; who is also a FISA court judge. Six days later, December 7th, 2017, Judge Contreras “was recused” from the case without explanation. The case was reassigned to DC District Judge Emmet Sullivan.
The Contreras recusal always seemed sketchy. If the conflict existed on December 7th, wouldn’t that same conflict have existed on November 30th, 2017?
On December 12th, 2017, Judge Sullivan gave out a rather unusual set of instructions to Robert Mueller. The instructions included Sullivan telling Mueller to turn over to the Flynn defense anything that could be considered exculpatory:
[…] if the government has identified any information which is favorable to the defendant but which the government believes is not material, the government shall submit the material to the Court for in camera review. (link)
On January 31st, 2018, Robert Mueller requested a delay of sentencing pushing the sentencing phase into May of this year. And then yesterday, February 14th, 2018, Mueller asks for the information he is turning over to be sealed.
As Nick Falco points out on Twitter: “We haven’t seen text messages between Strzok-Page mentioning Flynn or around the time of Strzok-Flynn Interview on January 24, 2017. I’m sure Horowitz has the texts & has given them to the Mueller team. Starting today, Flynn will have access to this evidence for his defense.” … “Today’s Stipulated Motion gives the Flynn team access to ALL evidence, including the FD-302’s, as long as the evidence is kept secret.”
♦Going back to the 30,000 foot overview, the substance behind the application for the FISA Title-1 surveillance warrant is the eventual basis for the FBI’s surveillance of Mike Flynn.
That FISA application is now evidenced to have relied heavily upon the ‘Clinton-Steele Dossier‘; and with discoveries from the Devin Nunes memo, and Chuck Grassley memo, there is strong evidence of gross and intentional misrepresentation within the application.
That puts the spotlight back upon the FISA judge who approved the application despite the transparent flaws, political omissions and factual weaknesses. If Rudolph Contreras signed off on the Title-1 surveillance warrant, Judge Contreras is now in question.
The left was quick to demand Sessions and Nunes recuse themselves for very ambiguous reasons and, as usual, instead of telling Democrats to go pound sand, they willingly obliged. Liberals have to have criminal wrongdoing hanging over their heads before they consider recusing themselves.