Politico reports:

Asked if he was doing Trump’s bidding [by dismissing charges against Michael Flynn], Barr said: “I’m doing the law’s bidding.”

The proclamation rang hollow to numerous Justice Department employees.

“There seems to be a different set of rules for political appointees,” said one longtime DOJ official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I was surprised. I didn’t think it would end like this — and this quickly.”

The official said Barr’s move was another signal to career officials that their work could be readily upended for political reasons. “It’s more demoralizing than anything else,” the DOJ official said.

One Justice Department lawyer added: “It’s deeply disheartening to see politics infect Justice. It’s everywhere now under Barr.”

While officials predicted more departures at DOJ, the overt signs of protest from within the department Thursday were relatively mild.

While the longtime prosecutor on the Flynn case, Brandon L. Van Grack, withdrew shortly before the government moved to dismiss the case, department officials said Van Grack would remain in his post overseeing foreign-agent cases.

The other line prosecutor handling the Flynn case in recent months, Jocelyn Ballentine, appeared to have declined to sign the 20-page pleading explaining why DOJ was seeking to drop the prosecution.

Some lamented that there was not already a more dramatic response to Barr’s actions.

“This moment represents the full collapse of an apolitical Justice Department. An astonishing assault on the rule of law and in a functional DOJ it would prompt mass resignation,” former intelligence community lawyer Susan Hennessey wrote on Twitter.

While current Justice officials appeared publicly mum, former officials were blunt about their views.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who arranged the critical interview with Flynn in January 2017, ridiculed Barr’s conclusion that there was no valid basis to talk to the then-national security adviser about his contacts during the transition with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

“The Department’s position that the FBI had no reason to interview Mr. Flynn pursuant to its counterintelligence investigation is patently false, and ignores the considerable national security risk his contacts raised,” McCabe said in a statement. “Today’s move by the Justice Department has nothing to do with the facts or the law — it is pure politics designed to please the president.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports:

The notoriously independent-minded federal judge who once said he was disgusted by the conduct of Michael Flynn could block the administration’s bid to drop criminal charges against the former adviser to President Donald Trump, legal experts said.

The Department of Justice on Thursday told U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington it wants to drop the case against Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, following a pressure campaign by the Republican president and his political allies.

While judges typically sign off on such motions, Sullivan could refuse and instead demand answers from the DOJ about who requested the sudden about-face, said Seth Waxman, a former federal prosecutor now at the law firm Dickinson Wright. [Continue reading…]