Ex-judge reviewing Flynn cases urges guilty plea be upheld

A retired judge named to review Michael Flynn's case recommended Friday the former national security adviser's guilty plea for lying to the FBI be upheld, suggesting the Justice Department's request to dismiss the charge was caused by pressure from President Trump.

“In the United States, Presidents do not orchestrate pressure campaigns to get the Justice Department to drop charges against defendants who have pleaded guilty — twice, before two different judges — and whose guilt is obvious,” the former jurist John Gleeson wrote in a report to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing the case.

"The government’s attempt to dress up a politically motivated dismissal that smacks of impropriety as a ‘policy judgment,’ should be rejected,” added Gleason, now a lawyer in private practice who used to be a federal judge in New York.

Gleeson's views on the case were known before Sullivan even appointed him to write an independent report.

Both Flynn's lawyers and DOJ have argued the charge and guilty plea should be dismissed because of evidence of FBI and prosecutorial wrongdoing, including the withholding of exculpatory evidence of innocence that U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen uncovered during a review of the case.

Sidney Powell, Flynn's lawyer, on Friday lambasted Gleeson's recommendation.

"Gleeson's filing was predictable and meaningless," she tweeted. "It's the irrelevant and wrong smear he intended it to be--ignoring the mountain of exculpatory evidence Mr. Jensen unearthed and produced that shows the investigation and prosecution of General Flynn was corrupt from its inception."