Thread by @DawsonSField

Finally got a little time to read Judge Sullivan's ruling on the #GenFlynn case.
Read about 12 pages & saw nothing new but I think it gives an explanation for the pardon, to prevent the judge from ruling on DOJ's "Presumption of Regularity" in the case.
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Presumption of Regularity is legal principle that a judge must accept the word of a federal agent or prosecutor unless he has evidence to refute what the fed says.

It's ironclad legal principle & DOJ made it a major problem in this case as I'll explain.

From 11/30/17 until 1/29/20 both the DOJ & Flynn's defense agreed that Flynn was guilty of the crime. During which time Van Grack & the SCO filed a lot of documents attesting to Flynn's guilt without rebuttal. Making that the record of the case, with a Presumption of Regularity.

On 1/29/20, Flynn withdrew his guilty plea & accused both his original defense attorneys (Covington & Burling) & the Special Prosecutors Office of illegally pressuring him to plead guilty. The 2+ years of discovery had provided adequate evidence to prove it too!

So after that date, Sullivan spent several months ording Covington & SCO to answer the allegations & produce evidence so the judge could determine if Flynn was lying or the lawyers who screwed him over were lying.
That evidence was strongly in Flynn's favor in my opinion.

As the deadline approached for the Judge to determine if Flynn was telling the truth about the unethical things the lawyers at Covington & DOJ had done in the case. Covington fought desperately to avoid Sullivan's order to hand over evidence in the case to Flynn & Powell.

Sullivan sided with Powell during a string of motions in early May, ordering Covington to hand over internal records that might indicate that other C&B clients lobbied or pressured the firm to throw Flynn under the bus.
Which if discovered would be a major ethics issue or crime.

With Covington losing those rulings, the stage was set to determine if Flynn's allegations against C&B & DOJ were true. And have the judge make a hearing on Powell's Motion to Dismiss for Egregious Government Conduct.

This would have been a momentous hearing to say the least!

DOJ responds by having Van Grack withdraw from the case & filed the Motion to Dismiss!

Meaning Van Grack would not be there to answer Sullivan's questions about misconduct by the SCO & DOJ.
So now the judge can't even ask him if Flynn is lying when he says he was framed.

Worse, Powell & DOJ agreed to withdraw all of the motions for Sullivan to decide if C&B & SCO set Flynn up like he alleged. It even took Flynn's accusations in the Motion to Dismiss for Egregious Govt Conduct off the record, retracting the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

In essence, the filings on 5/7/20 dropped all the allegations against the FBI, DOJ, SCO, & C&B of misconduct against Flynn.
This is very important, because it meant that the Judge could no longer consider those motions, he had to pretend there was no misconduct on the record.

This was made worse by DOJ filings in the Writ of Mandamus case. With the allegations retracted DOJ told the court that Flynn & Powell's allegations were unfounded.
Because the allegations were dropped to allow the Motion to Dismiss, DOJ told the court Flynn & Powell lied.

In DOJ's Motion to Dismiss, they refused to retract anything that Van Grack or the SCO said in the case. So DOJ were telling the judge that 2 1/2 years of filings saying Flynn was guilty were all true. For the MtD to succeed, all they needed to do was admit what was false.

But DOJ did the opposite, they said everything Van Grack said about Flynn's guilt is true while also arguing that everything Flynn said about Van Grack & C&B is unfounded. But that was only because the hearing on that evidence was sabotaged by the MtD & the allegations withdrawn.

So Judge Sullivan was now left with a record where all the claims against Flynn by Van Grack have to be afforded the Presumption of Regularity. The only evidence that they were not regular was Flynn's allegations which were withdrawn & could not be used against Van Grack's word.

During the cases about the Motion to Dismiss, more evidence of misconduct was presented from discovery given to Powell by Jensen. This again began to build a case that Flynn's allegations were true even if DOJ denied an misconduct against Flynn. Which lead to the hearing in Sept.

Had Judge Sullivan ruled on the MtD, he would have to weigh that evidence & decide if Flynn or DOJ was lying. That is the ruling we have all been waiting for because we were certain what that evidence was going to show.

With the pardon of Gen. Flynn, the Motion to Dismiss became moot. Meaning the judge did not & could not decide if Flynn's allegations against DOJ overruled all the things Van Grack had filed in the case. It prevented a finding of DOJ misconduct by the judge.

And with no final decision to be made, the judge reverted to the original record of the case, filed by Van Grack for the SCO & DOJ. Giving that original record the Presumption of Regularity, because no hearing & ruling had pierced the presumption with evidence to prove DOJ lied.

DOJ spent the entire Mandamus hearing era making 3 points: that nothing said in DOJ's name was false, everything Flynn said is unfounded, & explaining any of this would irreparably damage DOJ's reputation.

Why DOJ did this, I don't know.
But they got what they wanted: Flynn freed, no ruling that DOJ lied to the court or committed misconduct, & a judicial stamp of approval on Van Grack & SCO's prosecution of Flynn based on a record DOJ refused to correct.