On Thursday, a three panel DC Appeals Court Panel ordered Michael Flynn’s judge, Emmett Sullivan, to respond to the petition for a writ of mandamus within ten days.
Things that should be noted here. First, the court is expediting the process of this. Now some may think that ten days is a long time. The court is not slow walking this. In court proceedings this is moving pretty quickly. This shows that the court considers the issue compelling.
The person who was slow walking everything here was Sullivan. He had stretched out the amicus briefing period through July 16th. It is clear that the intent was to get to the election and then, if a change of administration happened, the case would disappear.
Judge Sullivan did not rule on the DOJ motion to dismiss that was supported by the defense. Sullivan did not explain why he needed “help” in making a decision that he has no right to refuse. This order makes him the respondent. It makes Sullivan lay out the reasons why he took an action that is contrary to court protocols and rules. Sullivan is on the hook for the answer.
I am sure that he is not writing this response himself. Without a doubt multiple Lawfare attorneys are working on the response. It is clear that what the Circuit Court is doing here is providing Sullivan with due process.
The Circuit Court has narrowed the response to one item. (There were three in the original petition for the writ.) This is seen in the references to 48(a) and US v Fokker. Sullivan’s response must be about the motion to dismiss and why he has asked for “help” in granting a motion that is demanded by both of these items.
Now I am sure there will be pages of legalese generated by the Lawfare attorneys who will be “advising” Sullivan.
The DOJ has been invited to submit its own response as well. I expect that the DOJ will do just that. After all, this is about separation of powers. The DOJ makes the decisions on prosecution not Judge Sullivan. I expect that the DOJ response should be short and to the point regarding its institutional concerns.
One more item. I am sure that Sullivan will try to say that Fokker does not apply. However, it is difficult to see just how that might be accomplished. This reference to Fokker seems to be a signal to Sullivan that he has serious arguing to make to convince the Court that they should not grant the writ of mandamus.
The next ten days should be interesting. How will the MSM react to all this? I think they will try to bury the news as much as possible. The only thread for them to follow will be to claim that Flynn admitted he lied. That was under duress of course. Would the MSM want to have that debated in public again?
Will former President Obama try to interfere again? LTG Flynn must know some pretty awful things about the past administration for them to go to this length to keep him quiet. I wonder just what those items are.
