Fellow DC Federal Judge Signals Emmet Sullivan May Challenge Flynn Pardon
President Donald Trump pardoned his former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (U.S. Army ret.) in the corrupt Russia collusion hoax investigation on Wednesday, November 25. The Department of Justice notified Judge Emmet Sullivan on Monday, November 30 about the pardon and (again) asked for the case against Flynn to be dismissed. Sullivan has not yet acted on the pardon and today, Friday, December 4, a fellow judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Senior Judge Reggie Walton, said at a court hearing in a civil case involving FOIA requests about the Flynn investigation that Sullivan may challenge the Flynn pardon as too broad, according to a report by the National Law Journal.
Judge Reggie Walton.
Judge Emmet Sullivan.
A trial judge raised the possibility that another federal judge overseeing Michael Flynn’s case could find that President Donald Trump’s pardon of Flynn is too broad, if it unlawfully protects the former national security adviser from future prosecutions.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said at a hearing Friday that he doesn’t think U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, his colleague presiding over the Flynn case, “has a lot of options in reference to what he does” after the pardon was granted, “unless he takes the position that the wording of the pardon is too broad, in that it provides protections beyond the date of the pardon.”
“I don’t know what impact that would have, what decision he would make, if he makes that determination that the pardon of Mr. Flynn is for a period that the law does not permit. I don’t know if that’s correct or not,” the judge continued. “Theoretically, the decision could be reached because the wording in the pardon seems to be very, very broad. It could be construed, I think, as extending protections against criminal prosecutions after the date the pardon was issued.”
“I don’t know if Judge Sullivan will make that determination or not,” Walton added.
Walton made the comments in a public records case over FBI interviews from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller III’s investigation. CNN and BuzzFeed News, represented by Ballard Spahr’s Charles Tobin at Friday’s hearing, want the records from Flynn’s FBI interviews to be reprocessed in light of the pardon, revealing information that was initially shielded due to an exemption tied to ongoing prosecutions…
Sullivan has refused to dismiss the Flynn case even though the Department of Justice and Flynn’s defense attorney Sidney Powell agreed to a dismissal after it was learned that Flynn was improperly targeted. Powell also uncovered evidence that Flynn was coerced by the Mueller special counsel’s office into falsely pleading guilty to lying to FBI agents when the Mueller team threatened to prosecute his son Mike Flynn, Jr.
Text of Trump’s pardon that Walton says may give Sullivan reason to challenge the Flynn pardon.
Executive Grant of Clemency
Donald J. Trump
President of the United States of America
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, GREETING:
BE IT KNOWN, THAT THIS DAY, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PURSUANT TO MY POWERS UNDER ARTICLE II, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 1, OF THE CONSTITUTION, HAVE GRANTED UNTO
MICHAEL T. FLYNN
A FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON
for the charge of making false statements to Federal investigators, in violation of Section 1001, Title 18, United States Code, as charged in the Information filed under docket number 1:17-CR-00232-EGS in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia; for any and all possible offenses arising from the facts set forth in the Information and Statement of Offense filed under that docket number or that might arise, or be charged, claimed, or asserted, in connection with the proceedings under that docket number; for any and all possible offenses within the investigatory authority or jurisdiction of the Special Counsel appointed on May 17, 2017, including the initial Appointment Order No. 3915-2017 and subsequent memoranda regarding the Special Counsel’s investigatory authority; and for any and all possible offenses arising out of facts and circumstances known to, identified by, or in any manner related to the investigation of the Special Counsel, including, but not limited to, any grand jury proceedings in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto signed my name and caused the seal of the Department of Justice to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington in the District of Columbia this twenty-fifth day of November in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty and of the Independence of the United States the Two Hundred and Forty-fifth.
Donald J. Trump
President
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