A federal judge has called the fired legal team of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to appear in his case that was dropped by the Justice Department. But, the case is now contested by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia.
Covington & Burling LLP filed a notice it will appear, according to Law&Crime. Covington originally represented Flynn when he had pleaded guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators about contacts with a Russian ambassador during the 2016 presidential transition.
Flynn's new attorney Sidney Powell accused Covington of ineffective assistance of counsel. Flynn dropped his guilty plea under Powell and the Justice Department has since dropped the case amid findings of alleged prosecutorial abuse.
"Mr. Flynn's guilty plea (and later failure to withdraw it) was the result of the ineffective assistance of counsel provided by his former lawyers, who were in the grip of intractable conflicts of interest, and severely prejudiced him," Powell's motion on behalf of Flynn read in a January motion.
"That pernicious conflict infected and prejudiced his defense until he retained new counsel in 2019."
Covinginton has ties to Democrats John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Powell, Flynn's new attorney, is a conservative.
"The truth is I am innocent of these charges and any other alleged 'criminal conduct,' and I request to withdraw my plea of guilty, and I will fight to restore my good name," Flynn wrote in his new declaration.
"I did not lie to them," his declaration read. "I believed I was honest with them to the best of my recollection at the time. I still don't remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Amb. Kislyak.
"My baseline reaction to questions posed by people outside of my superiors, immediate command, or office of responsibility is to protect sensitive or classified information, except upon 'need to know' and the proper level of security clearance."
Flynn's filing was attested as truthful under the "penalty of perjury" and District Judge Emmet Sullivan issued a one-page order Wednesday asking for legal briefs to be submitted on whether Flynn should be held in contempt for perjury in having admitted to lying to FBI investigators by pleading guilty and then making statements he did not lie in his declaration to withdraw the plea.
He also appointed retired federal judge John Gleeson as a friend-of-the-court to argue in opposition to the government's motion to dismiss Flynn's case.
Civil liberties legal expert Alan Dershowitz, a self-proclaimed "liberal Democrat," has rebuked the judge's efforts to reject the Justice Department's dropping of the case, saying there is no "controversy" if both the prosecution (on the ruling of Attorney General William Barr) and the defense agree to drop the case.
Information from Bloomberg was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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