UPDATED: The Gleeson Brief Against Flynn

I've been ignoring the brief submitted by disgraced former federal judge and hyper partisan attorney John Gleeson. Gleeson was selected by Sullivan to advise him on how to railroad Michael Flynn, despite DoJ's motion to dismiss the case. It's so absurd that it's not worth wasting time on. However, to give you some idea of why I feel that way, and to counter any Fake News hype you may have encountered, here are some opinions from accomplished lawyers who know nonsense when they see it.

First, shipwreckedcrew:

The brief filed by Judge Gleeson is in excess of 80 pages long.  For me to write a comprehensive take-down of what he has filed would take me at last 12,000 words, and a week to research and write.  That’s what I would do if I was involved in the case and preparing a response.  I can’t do that here. 

Instead I’m going to simply isolate a few areas in the brief that I find worthy of comment, and deal with them in separate articles. 

So, in referring to what’s “worthy of comment” I should begin with my first “hot take” on Twitter this morning when I called the brief “trash” — and then got critical.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline highlights Gleeson's decidedly checkered career as a federal judge. It's perhaps worth reading just to remind yourself how utterly lacking in any ethical sense these people are: WHO IS JOHN GLEESON?

He was a left-wing judge whose attitude towards crime depends on the identity of the alleged criminal.

Who is John Gleeson? He’s a former rogue judge and current accomplice to a judge who, it appears, also wants to go rogue.

Jonathan Turley at Zerohedge takes a similar line re Gleeson's past, although he treats Gleeson's crazy arguments somewhat seriously: "Trumped-Up": Former Judge's Flynn Filing Another Example Of "Irregularity" In The Age Of Rage.

I have been highly critical of Sullivan’s orders and particularly the importation of third parties to make arguments that neither party supports in a criminal case. 

Now Gleeson has filed a brief that confirms the worst fears that many of us had about his appointment.  Gleeson assails what he called  “a trumped-up accusation of government misconduct.” The ultimate position advocated in Gleeson’s arguments would be a nightmare for criminal defendants, criminal defense counsel and civil libertarians.  Indeed, as discussed below, Gleeson was previously reversed as a judge for usurping the authority of prosecutors. 

Gleeson actually makes the Red Queen in “Alice in Wonderland” look like an ACLU lawyer. After all she just called for “Sentence First–Verdict Afterward”  Gleeson is dispensing with any need for verdict on perjury, just the sentence. However, since these arguments are viewed as inimical to the Trump Administration, many seem blind to the chilling implications.

Finally, Gregg Jarrett

There is an old adage among lawyers: “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts; if the law is on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.” 

John Gleeson, the attorney and retired federal judge who was appointed by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to argue that federal prosecutors should not be permitted to dismiss their case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is using a sledgehammer to pound paper. 

On Wednesday, Gleeson filed a 72-page brief (an oxymoron, to be sure) that was stunningly feeble on both facts and law. To compensate for his anemic arguments, he tortures the reader with overwrought blather that bears little relevance to the main issue at hand. 

Perhaps Gleeson was hoping the court would simply weigh his submission on a scale and award him the prize for mindless verbosity. 

I don’t recommend reading the document. A root canal sans Novocain would be less painful. But the core of Gleeson’s argument can be found on Page 26, where he asserts – without a shred of credible evidence – that “prosecutors have offered pretextual reasons for dismissal,” and “there is clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse.”      

Gleeson’s inane reasoning is that President Trump has tweeted about the Flynn case, so there must be corruption afoot. Gleeson offers no real proof, of course. But he offers enough innuendo and supposition to fill a dumpster. 

Gleeson contends that the “decision to dismiss is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of Trump” (Page 38). In other words, guilt by association should be good enough to send Flynn to the hoosegow.

Sullivan is a disgrace.

UPDATE: Commenter Brad Crawford reminded me of another article, this one by Margot Cleveland, which also emphasizes in its own way that these shenanigans have absolutely nothing to do with the rule of law: New Brief Filed In Michael Flynn Case Proves The Anti-Trump Resistance Is Running The Show.

... in his 70-plus-page brief, Gleeson more than gave the longtime federal judge exactly what he wanted: a political hit on President Donald Trump that the press could parlay into a new faux scandal. Or, as Powell told me, it was a “pathetic, result-driven” brief, both “flatly wrong and ridiculously predictable.” 

But as predictable as the finished product was, it was still appalling to see the federal judiciary co-opted by the Resistance.

And commenter Mike Sylwester has added a link to an article by Andrea Widburg at American Thinker--From the First Page, Judge Gleeson’s Brief Against Flynn is a Travesty. Widburg, in addition to agreeing with the other lawyers already cited, takes a dive into the footnotes to show what a lying sack of you-know-what Gleeson--and, by extension, Sullivan and the other "resistance" legal flacks--is/are:

You know a lawyer’s bluffing if he inundates the court with case authority for an ostensibly simple principle. The amicus brief that Judge Gleeson filed with Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case has those string cites. Gleeson’s bluffing. Worse, he’s lying. 

It’s typical for dishonest attorneys to use fake citations – cases that do not stand for the principles asserted -- in their endless string sites, hoping no one will check. This what Judge Gleeson did in his brief: Every one of his 14 citations in footnote two on page 1 is a lie. That’s all you need to know about his brief.

As legal briefing, Gleeson's screed is totally unserious. It's about radical politics, about a revolution. What his antics, and those of Sullivana and the rest, do is to speak volumes about where America is as a nation espousing ordered liberty. We are up against people who would deprive us of both. That is the real crisis.