A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a lower-court judge to dismiss the criminal case against Michael Flynn, who briefly served as President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor.
The appeals court ruling came in response to a request from Flynn’s lawyers, after Washington, D.C., federal district court Judge Emmet Sullivan did not promptly grant the Justice Department’s motion seeking to dismiss the case.
Instead, Sullivan had appointed a lawyer to make arguments to him about why the case should not be tossed out.
Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. But since last year, he and his new lawyer, Sidney Powell had sought to retract his plea.
The U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia Circuit, in its ruling, said that the dismissal request in this case was not the kind of “unusual case where a more searching inquiry is justified” before granting a dismissal.
The ruling, written by Trump appointee Neomi Rao, also noted that the executive branch of government has “primacy over charging decisions.”
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