Judge Sullivan scores major victory over Bill Barr and Michael Flynn
Attorney General Bill Barr’s testimony this week was the latest reminder that he’s not some criminal mastermind with a magic wand. He’s a middling bumbler who has tried a number of criminal schemes while in office, and who has failed in the majority of them. Now Barr appears to once again be on his way to failing.
When Bill Barr forced the DOJ to drop its criminal case against Michael Flynn, even though Flynn had already pleaded guilty and confessed to his crimes, it didn’t mean that Flynn was off the hook. It meant there would be a protracted legal battle over whether Barr could even do this. Judge Emmet Sullivan has been standing tall against Barr from the start. After a wayward appeals court ruling that the case had to be thrown out, Sullivan asked the entire appeals court to re-hear the case.
Now the appeals court has agreed to do just that. Legally speaking, this means that the prior appeals court ruling never happened – and for now at least, the criminal conviction against Michael Flynn still stands.
We’ll see where the appeals court ends up going with this. But if Bill Barr thought his scheme was just magically going to work, he’s already been proven wrong on that front. Barr is a criminal, but he’s not the criminal mastermind that the media makes him out to be. He’s simply not very good at this.
