That order for Judge Sullivan to respond to the mandamus writ was highly unusual
Earlier [yesterday], the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued an extraordinary order — on its own motion — directing Judge Sullivan himself to file a response to the Petition for Writ of Mandamus filed by Gen. Flynn earlier this week.
In more than 30 years of practicing law, almost exclusively in federal courts, I have never seen a federal appeals court direct a district court judge to personally respond to a litigant’s motion, petition, or appeal.
As significant, in my opinion, is that the Order directs Judge Sullivan to address the Rule 48(a) issue in relation to the Circuit Court’s earlier decision in United States v. Fokker Services.
As many reading this are probably aware, I wrote extensively on the Fokker Services decision in this story and concluded that it left Judge Sullivan no choice other than to grant the Department of Justice’s Motion to Dismiss the case against General Flynn.
My piece on Sullivan is coming. Just probably not today. It’s taking a while to organize and write. But in the meantime, I did find something important – the transcript of the December 18, 2018 hearing at which Judge Sullivan excoriated Flynn and mused about whether he could have been charged with treason. It’s quite a document.
ADDENDUM: [Found at Ace’s.]
See this Twitter thread.
I can’t get the second link (transcript) to work.
Aesop, I found it here: https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/121818am-USA-v-Michael-Flynn-Sentencing.pdf.
What if Judge Sullivan is having a mental breakdown?
AesopFan:
Thanks. Fixed.
Advice from Saturday Morning TV for dealing with the lock-down-disaster and ObamaGate perpetrators.
https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/05/lessons-1.jpg?w=659&ssl=1
That was Sullivan grandstanding in 2018- at the time, it seemed like Sullivan was offering Flynn a way out, but given the power of hindsight and the playing out of events, it is all but certain that Sullivan was mocking Flynn, and Trump indirectly. He might even have done it to try to coerce Flynn into dictating some convenient lies against Trump.
I wrote it yesterday- people made far too much out of Sullivan’s handling of the Stevens case- remember, Stevens got convicted in Sullivan’s courtroom even when it was already pretty clear that the prosecutors were corruptly tainting the case. It took an FBI whistleblower and the Eric Holder DoJ to get Stevens’ verdict directed as not guilty. Sullivan did exactly jack sh*t to effect the outcome.
I misread Sullivan completely, but reviewing the first half of the transcript from 2018, I think I see what is going on now.
The 2018 hearing was before the Mueller fiasco in April of 2019, but after the Strzok/Page texts were being discussed in the media. I think Sullivan thought Flynn was trying to have it both ways, pleading guilty for no jail time, but filing a brief that basically says he was framed and didn’t do anything wrong. So Sullivan had a colloquy in which he put Flynn through the I am guilty catechism. Then Flynn hired new lawyers and took back everything he had said in front of Sullivan.
I think this is very personal for Sullivan, and at a minimum he wants to prove that Flynn is a weasel.
The woods are full of weasels, but I think Sullivan wants to put Flynn under the spotlight as a guy who will say anything.
Of course everything I said in the prior post does not justify Sullivan’s refusal to enter the dismissal and his going off the rails in a Jed Rakoff-like quest for true justice through extraordinary remedies.
Put Sullivan back in his box.
Ed Morrissey says what I’ve been thinking back on May 15, but I didn’t see it then. Powell, speaking to Sean Hannity, was totally blind-sided by Sullivan’s behavior in the Flynn case, as she was expecting something different from her view of him in the Stevens’ affair.
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/05/15/flynn-attorney-mystified-entire-thing-sullivan-orders-whats-next/
No wonder most people think those the other party is living in a different world.
They do not intersect. ⇄
About that Flynn-Kislyak transcript, which should have been produced to Flynn’s defense attorneys at the beginning of the entire scam prosecution — CHT is following the trail.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/22/should-we-prepare-to-discover-the-fbi-never-officially-used-the-kislyak-flynn-transcript/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/22/dni-ric-grenell-declassifying-flynn-kislyak-transcript-the-ic-doesnt-have-all-the-transcripts-summaries-it-wasnt-our-product/comment-page-2/#comment-8243684
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/22/interesting-segment-trey-gowdy-discusses-fbi-investigation-and-the-flynn-kislyak-transcripts-he-has-read/
Turley, ICYMI
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/22/a-date-with-destiny-d-c-circuit-gives-sullivan-10-days-to-defend-his-flynn-orders/
Aesop, good link! (which I gave a few posts ago, when normal folk had already moved on to more current events).
Still fantasize about a post election Rep majority in the House doing an impeachment of Sullivan.
A realistic punishment for ex-FBI folk who are convicted / determined to have abused or violated FBI rules would be to have their pensions converted to the same social security amounts that normal folk have, rather than the gold-plated FBI (IRS for Lynch) pensions.
Not sure exactly what laws the corrupt FBI was violating, nor if the DOJ is even willing to prosecute, much less if a trial finds “guilty beyond reasonable doubt”.
However, “rule violation” is much easier to prove. And should be a much faster, normal punishment, that hurts far less than trial, but also avoids creating martyrs.
Sullivan getting impeached might qualify for some such reduced pension as punishment – which would make other judges less likely to do it.
More on the mysterious Flynn-Kislyak transcript from J E Dyer (former Navy intel analyst, for those who haven’t read her work before). Both posts need to be read fully and in this order, but the bottom line is — there are holes in the Obama administration stories cum media narratives that Grenell may be on the verge of filling.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/05/21/unmasking-susan-rices-memo-and-things-that-didnt-happen-for-1000-alex/
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/05/23/grenell-tweet-on-kislyak-flynn-transcripts-suggests-interesting-scenario-for-what-the-fbi-was-doing/
(also posted on the Obamagate thread, because it’s all connected)
McCarthy also fills in some holes and connects the dots.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-was-not-masked-because-fbi-framed-him-as-a-clandestine-agent-of-russia/
Notice that this guideline makes it the agency’s subjective call whether to mask a U.S. person’s identity. So, for example, even if the FBI has no actual evidence that Mike Flynn is a clandestine foreign agent — in fact, even if the Bureau has already decided to close a counterintelligence case on Flynn — it need not mask his name if it decides its baseless suspicion is reason enough to claim that Flynn’s conversations constitute “foreign intelligence.”
Or even if the FBI knows Flynn’s job as incoming national-security advisor is to consult with foreign counterparts, and even if the FBI knows Flynn has said nothing improper in his conversation with Kislyak, the Bureau is free to claim that Flynn’s name must be revealed in order to “assess the importance” of his conversations with Russia’s ambassador — something that is not done to other U.S. officials whose job is to consult with foreign emissaries, because the FBI knows it has no business monitoring the conduct of American foreign policy.
I think he is finally over his former admiration of his beloved agency, but it’s been a long hard battle.
He gonna get a whuppin…
but they gave him a few days to fix it so he dont…
Notice that this guideline makes it the agency’s subjective call whether to mask a U.S. person’s identity.
Actually not… “minimization instructions.” is not in play..
There are essentially two types of incidental collection. The first type is when legitimate foreign intelligence targets are speaking about a domestic person. The second type is when a legitimate foreign intelligence target is speaking with a domestic person. If the domestic person information is deemed not to have intelligence value then it is purged from government databases, but otherwise can be disseminated with minimization; in the first type of incidental collection the domestic names will be redacted, and in the second type of incidental collection everything the domestic person says will be redacted. As former CIA official Michael Morrell has put it, “In the second type of incidental collection, where the U.S. person is actually part of the conversation, typically nothing that U.S. person says can be disseminated.”
a big distinction they dont want you to ‘get’….
a conflation… which is where the split comes from they are so good making
one side kind of sort of knows.. the other side knows..
the sort of knows crowd is giving nefarious reasons to hate the knowing group
[this is why you dont see them do this or report on things everyone would agree on]
The tapes in question were made by who? the FBI? the FBI tapes international conversations? or were the tapes made by another agency and then ended up at the FBI? then whose unmasking rules apply?
The law in question they are all referring to without saying is: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
[M]inimization at the acquisition stage is designed to insure that the communications of nontarget U.S. persons who happen to be using a FISA target’s telephone, or who happen to converse with the target about non-foreign intelligence information, are not improperly disseminated. Similarly, minimization at the retention stage is intended to ensure that information acquired, which is not necessary for obtaining, producing, or disseminating foreign intelligence information, be destroyed where feasible. Finally, the dissemination of foreign intelligence information needed for an approved purpose . . . should be restricted to those officials with a need for such information.
ah… so now… was this followed? was the communication destroyed?
was it necessary for Obama to know? how about others in his office?
if so, under what argument?
If the surveillance is pursuant to a court order or warrant, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court or FISC) must find that the proposed surveillance meets the statutory minimization requirements for information pertaining to U.S. persons,[9] but intelligence agencies have broad discretion to spy without a court order or warrant, and so they must ensure compliance with those statutory minimization requirements under Section 702 of FISA
Under subsection 702(b) of the FISA Amendments Act, such an acquisition is also subject to several limitations. Specifically, an acquisition:
May not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;
May not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;
May not intentionally target a U.S. person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
May not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States;
Must be conducted in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Now you have a checklist to make a determination from… 🙂
[expressing concern] in 2015 during the Obama administration, Representative Pete Hoekstra tweeted: “WSJ report that NSA spied on Congress and Israel communications very disturbing. Actually outrageous. Maybe unprecedented abuse of power.”
and remember this?
On March 4, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones at his Trump Tower office late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and the Trump administration cited news reports to defend these accusations. His initial claims were based on an article in Breitbart News.
after Director James Comey stated that neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) possessed any information to support Donald Trump’s wiretapping allegations – Nunes stated on March 23 that the Trump administration’s communications might have been legally monitored during the transition period as part of an “incidental collection”.
its interesting to read the wiki and then piece together with whats going on with sullivan and flynn… which i think that they dont want people to do
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_wiretapping_allegations
There is enough there to have fun making a timeline… be sure to use crayon as that is the tool de-rigour. However, what happens is that you start to figure out that somehow, all this is related given the timelines… and if so, the question of who revealed what so what was released even back then to even make guesses?
whose idea was to name the operation after a movie with whoopie goldberg?
Crossfire Hurricane (FBI investigation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_Hurricane_(FBI_investigation)
The investigation was officially opened on July 31, 2016, initially due to information on Trump campaign member George Papadopoulos’s early assertions of Russians having damaging material on Donald Trump’s rival candidate Hillary Clinton. From late July to November 2016, the joint effort between the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) examined evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election.
Lost my blockquotes on that last one; everything but the final sentence is McCarthy.