The Department of Justice has filed a 46-page affidavit with the federal district court in Washington swearing to the accuracy of the documents it submitted in support of its request to dismiss charges against President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the Washington Examiner reported.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine wrote that “there have been no material alterations made to any of the 14 Government Exhibits filed in support of the motion to dismiss and the supplement to the motion to dismiss,” the Examiner reported.
The submission came after an order by presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan, who questioned the veracity of the documents after lawyers for two FBI officials involved in the case claimed Post-It notes were attached to their handwritten notes with estimated dates of occurrence.
Sullivan, appointed by then-President Bill Clinton, so far has refused to dismiss the case, going so far as to take the unusual step of appointing an outside counsel to argue against the Justice Department’s motion and to appeal a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that he dismiss the case.
That latest action prompted Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell to file a motion earlier this month for Sullivan to recuse himself from the case for “increasingly hostile” bias in the case. Newsmax TV contributor and retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz made a similar claim in September.
At issue in the latest development were Post-It Notes attached to copies of notes taken by former FBI agent Peter Strzok, since dismissed from the agency, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that were handed over to Flynn as part of a discovery review. The Post-It Notes included approximate dates the notes were made and, according to the Justice Department, inadvertently included in the material turned over to Flynn’s attorneys.
Flynn, a retired three-star Army general, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak between the 2016 presidential election and the time the Trump administration took office.
Flynn was ensnared in the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation – which became a probe by special prosecutor Robert Mueller – into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian government officials to influence the 2016 election.
He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017 but sought to withdraw his plea in January. The Department of Justice filed a motion in May to dismiss the case saying the questioning of Flynn in the case was “unjustified. However, Sullivan, has refused to accept the motion.
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