Date: June 26th, 2018 11:24 PM
Author: costumed new version
Updated February 27, 2018 - 6:48 pm
WASHINGTON — Behind the front-page indictments issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, there have been quiet movements in the courts on another front.
These developments have led supporters of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to call on President Donald Trump to pardon Flynn, or on Flynn to withdraw his guilty plea for making “materially false statements and omissions” to the FBI in 2017.
The developments are:
■ Rudolph Contreras, the federal judge who accepted Flynn’s guilty plea on Dec. 1, took himself off or was taken off the case for undisclosed reasons.
■ His replacement is Emmet Sullivan, a crusading federal jurist who in 2009 famously lambasted federal prosecutors who had won a conviction against U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for repeatedly withholding exculpatory evidence from Stevens’ legal team.
Ever since then, Sullivan has made it a practice to order prosecutors to share information favorable to a defendant with the defense team. As Flynn awaits his sentencing, Sullivan issued one such order in December. He did so again on Feb. 16, with the important instruction – that if prosecutors aren’t sure if favorable evidence is material, they should hand it over to the judge so that he can decide.
https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/debra-saunders/judges-instructions-raise-new-questions-in-michael-flynn-case-analysis/
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3987371&forum_id=2#36316180)