In this springtime of the corona virus, Fridays creep around like hooded sentinels of dread as America faces another weekend of social emptiness and vanishing prospects. The bars have opened back up in some quarters of the country, sure, but who has the spare cash to pay for three margaritas at ten bucks a pop? Anyway, who expects the government hand-outs to go on forever? And if they did, as in current Democratic Party theory, what kind of country would we be, and what kind of people?
Fridays are also the days when things drop ominously: stock indexes, releases of shocking information, indictments coming down. Which brings me to the recent antics of Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. What sort of mischief has this cheeky fellow cooked up in the drawn-out case of General Flynn? Why, to draw it out months further by demurring to grant the DOJ’s motion to dismiss and to take over its role as prosecutor, which is not exactly consistent with American workings of jurisprudence.
Last weekend, in a well-leaked conference call, it appears, Judge Sullivan took marching orders from former President Obama who suggested snaring General Flynn on a perjury rap for withdrawing his guilty plea, and whaddaya know, the stratagem laid itself out this past week like a fully-crafted macramé, all the little tufts and knots neatly in place — thanks to the busy little fingers of Lawfare attorneys burning the midnight oil all week to get the thing hoisted up on the wall. The tortured logic of the scheme was really something to behold: by withdrawing a guilty plea Flynn had entered under oath, he would be guilty of lying to the court about being guilty in the first place, and therefore had perjured himself. Imagine the interior of the legal minds responsible for that: dank chambers of rot crawling with centipedes and mealybugs of subterfuge.
The judge’s transparently perfidious moves, revealed the desperation of Mr. Obama and scores of former and current officials allied with him, who are themselves liable for prosecution in the unraveling tapestry of RussiaGate. There is a sentiment welling up in this land that enough is enough with these devious pranks of crooked lawyers, and today, being Friday, would be an excellent moment for the DC District US Court of Appeals to issue a writ of mandamus for Judge Sullivan to cut the shit and get on with his bound duty to put the Flynn case to rest. A nice added touch, if necessary, would be to kick Judge Sullivan’s seditious ass off the case and replace him with a judge who understands established law and precedent.
The precedent has been reestablished as recently as last week on another case (U.S. v. Sineneng-Smith) when the US Supreme Court ruled 9-0, in an opinion penned by none other than the Notorious RBG herself, that “…courts are essentially passive instruments of government… they ‘do not, or should not, sally forth each day looking for wrongs to right….’” The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (Rule 48a) give no power to a district court to deny a prosecutor’s motion to dismiss charges even when a judge disagrees. It’s pretty goshdarn cut-and-dry.
Of course, Attorney General Barr would have had to file such an appeal to the higher court. Being as how deathly quiet his office has been all week, since Judge Sullivan revealed his scheme, it seems plausible to me that Mr. Barr has done exactly something like that. It would be very Barr-like for him to do it with absolutely no fanfare. Grandstanding is not his thing, whereas sending a clear message in defense of the rule-of-law is very much his thing and the message now is that the law is not to be used as a weapon against the workings of justice itself.
I hope I am right in expecting that Mr. Barr has acted speedily and silently against this band of skulking white-shoed caitiffs. The situation calls for a swift and forceful response. An appeal for a mandamus order is, by definition, an emergency measure — for actions that require immediate correction. The lawyers who infest the DC swamp need a brisk whack on their toothy snouts, driving them back into their Lawfare mud-holes. Not a few of them need to be skewered and flayed, their hides nailed to a wall as a lesson to those remaining.
This Friday would be a truly ripe moment for some actual indictments to come down against some of the perps of RussiaGate and its associated misdeeds. There are so many of them that I suppose they will have to be brought out in bunches and batches, at regular intervals as spring turns toward summer, when all the free money is gone and the American people begin to seethe and holler, and need a vivid reminder that the law is still a presence in our lives.
