The New York Times reports:

Accusing the Justice Department of a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power,” a former mafia prosecutor and retired federal judge urged a court on Wednesday to reject the Trump administration’s attempt to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, and instead sentence him.

The authority of judges to scrutinize case dismissal requests “empowers courts to protect the integrity of their own proceedings from prosecutors who undertake corrupt, politically motivated dismissals,” wrote John Gleeson, whom the judge in the Flynn case, Emmet G. Sullivan, appointed to argue against the unusual effort to drop it. “That is what has happened here.”

But Mr. Gleeson also argued in a 73-page brief that Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt of court for lying under oath when he gave conflicting statements about his actions to Judge Sullivan, a possibility the judge had raised when appointing Mr. Gleeson last month to help him analyze the request to drop the case.

Mr. Gleeson’s brief amounted to a step-by-step dissection of the factual claims and legal arguments the Justice Department put forward last month to justify withdrawing a charge of making false statements that Mr. Flynn had twice pleaded guilty to as part of the Russia investigation. The department’s highly unusual intervention, directed by Attorney General William P. Barr, came after a long public campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies and prompted an outcry from former law enforcement officials that the administration was further politicizing the department. [Continue reading…]