Mark Zaid, JFK and Trump

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to-avoid-going-to-jail-under-18-u-s-c-section-1001-for-lying.html

I'll go with this one hahaha.! Flynn's now up for perjury thanks to Powell! And Sullivan isn't done I suspect! Let's see what Covington's deliberations with Flynn say! God this is funny!

"ORDERED that amicus curiae shall address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 401, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42, the Court’s inherent authority, and any other applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.205.0_10.pdf

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Bob Ness

[Jeff Carter]

31 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

That is your opinion Jeff and you're welcome to have it but I don't agree. I don't think I'm going to go through the scumbag material you're trying to defend such as Trump Tower, Russia collusion, Moscow Real Estate deals, Turkish kidnapping schemes and on and on. You're defending Stone for Christ's sake. No "perjury trap" has been exposed, he lied. That's it.

Yes but nothing you listed was found to be relevant to the predicate of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

No criminal charges directly related to the predicate of the CH investigation were ever filed, and Mueller concluded there was no evidence of collusion to effect the 2016 election. 

So you are welcome to be very very angry over activity you disapprove of, but none of it ever amounted to what you think it did.

[Bob Ness]

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

 I'm not sure what you are referring to.

"To help Flynn, the department has made public documents it jealously guards in almost every other case, including confidential memos and internal deliberations.

But it has balked at disclosing the transcripts of the very conversations with the Russian ambassador that Flynn admitted he lied about when the FBI interviewed him."

That's from the article Judge Gleeson et al wrote a few days ago. Sullivan has just appointed Gleeson to look into the Flynn perjury trap Powell set for him! That's just hysterical!

Please do read:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/11/flynn-case-isnt-over-until-judge-says-its-over/

[Jeff Carter]

The Washington Post also the same day published an op-ed by a longtime Defence Attorney, who made arguments in favour of the DOJ’s motion to dismiss. There seems to be disagreement -  approving or disapproving - based on experiences as a defence attorney rather than a prosecutor. I find the arguments associated with the defence attorneys far more persuasive. Those offering prosecutor’s briefs hit the same notes - he lied / he admitted his guilt - without allowing that neither premise is anywhere near absolute in the details.

And there’s a tendency to fundamentally misrepresent the proceedings. Gleeson, for example, portrays the late release of required exculpatory evidence as rather some kind of special benefit or gift:

“To help Flynn, the department has made public documents it jealously guards in almost every other case, including confidential memos and internal deliberations.”

“To help Flynn” - that is so arrogant.  The documents are important exculpatory evidence and were required by law to be shared with the defence at the start of proceedings. As late as this past December, the Mueller prosecutor Van Grack insisted to the court that these documents did not exist. The only reason they are now available is the DOJ felt compelled to appoint a special counsel to review the Flynn prosecution, after the sentencing phase stalled when Sullivan began interrogating the material relevance of the “falsehoods and omissions” and Flynn secured new counsel. This late arriving exculpatory evidence fundamentally changed the understanding of the facts behind the case. Gleeson is covering for the “career prosecutor” who buried this exculpatory evidence while exercising an aggressive and threatening posture when shaping the plea deal.

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

The Washington Post also the same day published an op-ed by a longtime Defence Attorney, who made arguments in favour of the DOJ’s motion to dismiss. There seems to be disagreement -  approving or disapproving - based on experiences as a defence attorney rather than a prosecutor. I find the arguments associated with the defence attorneys far more persuasive. Those offering prosecutor’s briefs hit the same notes - he lied / he admitted his guilt - without allowing that neither premise is anywhere near absolute in the details.

Here you go again with the WAPO defense. That's great. He's a defense attorney. I find Flynn's repeated statements to the Judge to be persuasive. You know the one's where he admitted to two judges he did what he was accused of. But you're not reading carefully.

Gleeson's review is about Flynn having testified two different ways to the court! Get it? Try to keep up in your impossible defense of this. Flynn is now claiming he lied to the court! That is not in anyway debatable and I pointed that out to you several posts ago. Flynn lied to the Judge when he pled twice before or he's lying now which is what is being reviewed here by Gleeson along with the government's motion to dismiss.

Edited May 14, 2020 by Bob Ness

[Bob Ness]

41 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

“To help Flynn, the department has made public documents it jealously guards in almost every other case, including confidential memos and internal deliberations.”

“To help Flynn” - that is so arrogant.  The documents are important exculpatory evidence and were required by law to be shared with the defence at the start of proceedings. As late as this past December, the Mueller prosecutor Van Grack insisted to the court that these documents did not exist. The only reason they are now available is the DOJ felt compelled to appoint a special counsel to review the Flynn prosecution, after the sentencing phase stalled when Sullivan began interrogating the material relevance of the “falsehoods and omissions” and Flynn secured new counsel. This late arriving exculpatory evidence fundamentally changed the understanding of the facts behind the case. Gleeson is covering for the “career prosecutor” who buried this exculpatory evidence while exercising an aggressive and threatening posture when shaping the plea deal.

It is not exculpatory information! If the transcripts were released and showed Flynn speaking to Kislyak about the weather and football results that would be exculpatory! Barr is refusing to release the transcripts but is releasing (I presume piecemeal) deliberative memos and conversations between officials in an investigation that by their nature can be made to look bad because they're never intended to be used in court. It's a very clear strategy from Shea/Barr to throw flak up into the air to fool you (not me) but will not fool the judge and gain traction with him. You're so easily fooled by this that it's remarkable to me you keep the argument up. Deliberations are not required by law to be shared with the defense! Neither are attorney/client notes required by discovery or any other instance unless a crime has been committed as a result of those deliberations. Barr spit them out for your consumption. He's withheld the incriminating stuff (presumably) no doubt because it could hurt politically.

48 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

This late arriving exculpatory evidence fundamentally changed the understanding of the facts behind the case. Gleeson is covering for the “career prosecutor” who buried this exculpatory evidence while exercising an aggressive and threatening posture when shaping the plea deal.

What "understanding of facts" did it alter? None. Flynn lied and admitted to doing so. At least twice. I've shown them to you.

Gleeson hasn't even reviewed and you're now saying he's covering for the prosecutors? Gleeson has been asked to determine whether those statements were perjury (thanks Sydney Powell!). He is also reviewing the prosecution's withdrawal. He is not, to my knowledge, reviewing the circumstances behind Flynn's convictions which generally don't allow for Amici participation in criminal trials. They are allowed in these new issues to provide guidance to the court.

Sullivan and Gleeson are Judges, not prosecutors or defense attorneys and you can expect their rulings/findings to adhere much closer to a fair outcome than opponents such as lawyers in a courtroom.

[W. Niederhut]

Bob,

       I'm beginning to understand your point (above) on this thread.

      It's impossible to have an intellectually honest debate with Jeff and Rob about Trump and Putin's Russiagate scandal and its sequelae (including the Flynn case.)

     They repeatedly ignore the facts, while re-posting the same old, debunked Trump/Fox disinformation-- or, worse, post non-sequiturs that hijack and deflect from the damning facts.

      There's a good summary of the Trump/Fox/Jeff/Rob revisionist history of the Flynn case in this morning's NYT.

Trump White House Rewrites History, This Time About Flynn

Three years ago, President Trump swiftly fired his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, for lying to the F.B.I. Ahead of the November election, Mr. Trump and his allies are now telling a very different story.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/us/politics/trump-michael-flynn.html

[Jeff Carter]

OK. You guys are on the side of the prosecutors. That's been obvious for a long time. You are invested in a deeply partisan way, which triggers your emotions. 

You are both very very angry that Flynn expressed "material falsehoods and omissions" when discussing UN Security Council votes on Israel with FBI agents, and feel very strongly he should face criminal sanction for that. Fair enough.

And you get even angrier when others wonder if justice is actually being done here. OK.

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

OK. You guys are on the side of the prosecutors. That's been obvious for a long time. You are invested in a deeply partisan way, which triggers your emotions. 

You are both very very angry that Flynn expressed "material falsehoods and omissions" when discussing UN Security Council votes on Israel with FBI agents, and feel very strongly he should face criminal sanction for that. Fair enough.

And you get even angrier when others wonder if justice is actually being done here. OK.

Not really Jeff. Justice was done IMO. He received a sweetheart deal (the Judge even advised him to wait to be sentenced because he wasn't as inclined to be as lenient as the prosecutors were recommending) from Mueller that let his son off the hook (informally) and would have given him no or little jail time in exchange for his truthful testimony in the MI and the Kian case. IIRC he provided little information of value in the MI (depending on how you look at it). He was not getting the guillotine.The way these things work in almost every case is the court usually does a pretty good job of sorting these things out and the defendant's past, the circumstances of the charges and other considerations are fairly considered and the sentence is roughly what it should be. Look at Cohen, Stone, Manafort etc. Mostly they pretty much got what was coming to them.

Then you have Flynn. He made an agreement with prosecutors, agreed and stipulated to their charges and then yanked his agreement, backed out of the Kian case and screwed his attorneys (who were working pro bono for him) accusing them of incompetence.  There is no question about his guilt in the underlying charges, he admitted to them and pled to them several times and I assume also stated as such in depositions to the prosecutors and in consultation with his attorneys. The testimony he was to give is first taken in depositions with his attorneys present advising him in real time prior to any court appearances in which he appears including pleadings, trials and other proceedings.There are several witnesses to those facts plus documentary evidence. These are not arguable in the sense that they are facts easily found and have been provided to you and Robert from the record mostly, not articles or opinion pieces from newspapers.

As Sullivan knows and Gleeson has commented on, it's obvious to me that what is happening is Barr is injecting a political objective into a legal proceeding by tossing as much chaff into the air as possible to create doubt about the validity of the Flynn prosecution and the Mueller investigation in general. The actions taken by Barr are not balanced, their concerns have been litigated in this court already and the withdrawal only serves to provide talking points for Trump on the campaign trail.

His Fox attorney Sidney Powell has apparently opened him up to perjury charges now which could very well lead to a sentence worse than his 951 pleas. Unbelievable.

To say that "you guys are on the side of the prosecutors" is pretty funny because Barr/Shea ARE THE PROSECUTORS which means I'm actually on the side of THE COURT.

Edited May 14, 2020 by Bob Ness

[Jeff Carter]

Bob, not only are you arguing now irrelevant procedural issues, you are adopting a talking point that an organized crime technique such as threatening family members with harm if a subject doesn't bend to the will of the prosecutors is fair practice.

Exculpatory evidence was produced. The revised reasoning of the DOJ - based on its review - appears in the M2D. I have yet to see a counter analysis which takes this new information into account. All I see are ad hominem attacks, and a blind insistence that the original plea deal stands as the final word. 

Defence attorneys are uniform in stating that innocent people plead guilty through plea deals everyday all across the country. To try and frame these situations in the context of "perjury" is infantilizing the complex and troubling questions which arise.

[Bob Ness]

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Bob, not only are you arguing now irrelevant procedural issues, you are adopting a talking point that an organized crime technique such as threatening family members with harm if a subject doesn't bend to the will of the prosecutors is fair practice.

This is not an "organized crime technique" Jeff. If they are part of the conspiracy what do you expect? It is required for them to pursue other people who are complicit.

 

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Exculpatory evidence was produced. The revised reasoning of the DOJ - based on its review - appears in the M2D. I have yet to see a counter analysis which takes this new information into account. All I see are ad hominem attacks, and a blind insistence that the original plea deal stands as the final word.

They have asserted it's exculpatory but the issues have already been found not to be. Sorry.

 

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Defence attorneys are uniform in stating that innocent people plead guilty through plea deals everyday all across the country.

That may be true from time to time but prosecutors and judges typically don't railroad innocent people into plea deals. That's movie talk and I know it from experience. You're claiming "defense attorneys" in some sort of global sense but that kind of claim means nothing. Guilty people throughout the prison system say "I was framed!" because they couldn't deny they actually done the deed. That's what's happening here. As I said he was guilty of the underlying charges. Fact. Flynn said so.

 

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

To try and frame these situations in the context of "perjury" is infantilizing the complex and troubling questions which arise.

What are you talking about Jeff? You don't know what you're talking about and/or haven't read the Judge's order. The judge is requesting an Amici to find out whether Flynn should be charged with perjury or not. To wit:

ORDERED that amicus curiae shall address whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 401, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 42, the Court’s inherent authority, and any other applicable statutes, rules, or controlling law.

That is not me it is Sullivan who apparently is pissed off enough to order this. My guess is he knows more about the case than you or I and the litany of bozos trying to claim that "Flynn be done wrong".

Edited May 14, 2020 by Bob Ness

[Bob Ness]

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Bob, not only are you arguing now irrelevant procedural issues...

I'd also like to know what "irrelevant procedural issues" you're talking about. I didn't know I was referencing any irrelevant ones.

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Bob Ness said:

I'd also like to know what "irrelevant procedural issues" you're talking about. I didn't know I was referencing any irrelevant ones.

As I understand it, the DOJ M2D supersedes the previous activity, including arguments regarding what is or what is not exculpatory evidence, and it makes the plea deal itself moot.

The exculpatory evidence, discovered after Van Glack insisted to the court it did not exist or was not relevant, not only is of obvious relevance to Flynn's case re; the arguments of the new counsel, it also fundamentally transformed the understandings of what transpired in January 2017. To claim it had already been dealt or is much ado about nothing with won't hold water. That's why the authors of the prosecutor briefs are avoiding talking about it.

The amicus briefs and criminal contempt efforts will probably not get very far. That's my best guess, based on reviewing legal discussions from both sides.

[Bob Ness]

50 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

As I understand it, the DOJ M2D supersedes the previous activity, including arguments regarding what is or what is not exculpatory evidence, and it makes the plea deal itself moot.

It does in the sense that the prosecution is not inclined to present further arguments against Flynn but the Judge can rule it has no bearing on his conviction for which he is awaiting sentencing. The motion cannot supersede arguments if the judge decides to ignore it. The lawyers on either side of the case do not make that decision. It's not their job to tell the court what arguments to hear.  If the judge believed the motion showed exculpatory evidence or a miscarriage of justice he would have dismissed it with prejudice immediately and probably some months ago.

The information you and others are calling "exculpatory" isn't that at all. The judge agrees with me at this point. What they've thrown into the air are deliberations, claims of Logan Act predicates (it was already predicated on 951 & 1001's and not closed) all the while refusing to disclose the transcripts they've actually referred to in the motion. Does that make sense? No.

50 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

The amicus briefs and criminal contempt efforts will probably not get very far. That's my best guess, based on reviewing legal discussions from both sides.

Possibly. The end result will be a Trump pardon at some point sooner or later or possibly a commutation of sentence. The shame is on him though not Sullivan, Van Grack et al. The whole Barr show is a travesty. That said Sullivan and Gleeson may indeed rule he didn't perjure himself and allow the withdrawal to go forward with or without prejudice. I don't know. But I do trust the system, mostly because I know that by and large it works.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Bob Ness

[Bob Ness]

Keeps getting juicier!

 

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/michael-flynns-fired-lawyers-just-filed-court-papers-to-reappear-in-his-case/