Donald Trump’s Michael Flynn stunt is already unraveling
Donald Trump thinks that getting Michael Flynn off the hook will somehow help him in the 2020 election, and that alone is proof that Trump is failing in the cognitive department. Bill Barr is surely only going along with this pointless stunt in order to appease Trump, because while Barr is evil and he’s not all that bright, he can’t possibly think this is going to turn out well.
Judge Emmet Sullivan was always going to have a problem with this sudden reversal no matter how it went down, because Michael Flynn has already pleaded guilty and confessed to his crimes, and Sullivan has already made clear in court transcripts that he’s disgusted with Flynn’s crimes. But now there’s another reason for Sullivan to intervene.
Interim U.S. Attorney Tim Shea is the one who filed the motion to drop the Flynn case. Shea is clearly in Barr’s pocket. But it appears none of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys in Shea’s office were willing to go along with it, because that signature line was left blank. Worse, because Shea only has interim status, he can’t actually file anything with the court – and with none of his Assistant Attorneys willing to get involved, it turns out Shea used his predecessor’s bar number on the document.
As legal expert Deepak Gupta explains, this gives Judge Sullivan an easy legitimate excuse to dig into this court filing and seek answers about what’s really going on and who’s really behind this stunt. It also presumably gives Sullivan an easy excuse for rejecting the request to dismiss the Flynn case. Not only was this stunt a terrible self-defeating idea on Trump’s part, it’s being carried out poorly by Barr.
