In the Flynn case, you’ve got to be kidding

Last week I noted the response of the Department of Justice to General Flynn’s current post-plea motion to compel exculpatory evidence. I added links to stories on the response to the motion as well as our own previous posts on the motion itself. General Flynn’s current counsel has now filed a reply to the DoJ response. Our friend Techno Fog has posted it online here.

His guilty plea notwithstanding, General Flynn ultimately seeks the dismissal of the case against him on due process grounds. He does not seek to withdraw his plea and contest the false-statements charge to which he pleaded guilty. The law imposes a heavy burden of proving egregious government misconduct to support such a dismissal. Former FBI agent James Gagliano comments on the evidence produced so far in the Examiner column “The Michael Flynn smoking gun: FBI headquarters altered interview summary.”

General Flynn emphasizes in the conclusion of the linked reply memorandum that his present motion is limited. He seeks an order compelling the government to produce the additional the exculpatory evidence he has requested — in full and unredacted form — and an order to show cause why the government should not be held in contempt. He will use the allegedly withheld evidence to file a separate motion seeking dismissal of the false-statements charge to which he has pleaded guilty.

The issues are not easy to sort out. As if to put an exclamation point on the substance underlying them, however, the Department of Justice wrote General Flynn’s counsel this week after the submission of Flynn’s reply memorandum. It has also filed a copy of the letter with the court. In the letter the DoJ advised General Flynn that it mixed up the authors of the FBI 302 interview notes it produced to him (see Mr. Fog’s tweet below).

The mix-up may or may not be significant, but you have got to be kidding me. Undercover Huber has posted a Twitter thread commenting on it here. We await a full accounting of the government misconduct in the Flynn case.

Flynn counsel Sidney Powell discussed all this with Shannon Bream earlier this week in the interview below. Given the complexity of the issues involved, I find the background and introduction provided in the interview particularly useful.

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