Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…
Attorney General Bill Barr — Trump’s Roy Cohn — just saved Trump the political headache of pardoning Michael Flynn by doing it himself. No attorneys other than the one Barr installed signed the motion to drop the prosecution. Perfectly corrupt.
Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about his secret contacts with the Russian ambassador to discuss sanctions while Obama was president.
The judge, by the way, doesn’t have to accept it. It’s not an automatic dismissal.
I think the judge will allow it but perhaps embarrass the government in the process.
The motion could have been drafted by his defense lawyers, if he actually had good defense lawyers. Its argument is that the thing about which he lied, in light of “newly discovered and disclosed information,” was not “materially” false, which is an element of the crime he pled to.
First, the government has been in custody of all this information. It’s only “newly discovered” to the public. So at any time the government could have but did not move to dismiss the charge.
Second, the DOJ has basically granted a gift to criminal defense attorneys, who will be citing this document for a long time to come to attack the suddenly weakened notion of “materiality.”
Footnote seven is embarrassing…
