Without Fear Or Favor

The Department of Justice has a solemn responsibility to prosecute this case -- like every other case -- without fear or favor and, to quote the Department's motto, solely "on behalf of justice."  It has abdicated that responsibility through a gross abuse of prosecutorial power, attempting to provide special treatment to a favored friend and political ally of the President of the United States.  It has treated the case like no other, and in doing so has undermined the public's confidence in the rule of law.  I respectfully suggest that the best response to Flynn's perjury is not to respond in kind.  Ordering a defendant to show cause why he should not be held in contempt based on a perjurious effort to withdraw a guilty plea is not what judges typically do.  To help restore confidence in the integrity of the judicial process, the Court should return regularity to that process.  And the Court can best do that by denying the government's Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss, adjudicating any pending motions, proceeding to sentencing, and factoring the defendant's contemptuous conduct into the appropriate punishment.

-- John Gleeson, in his amicus curiae brief to the US District Court in DC, in US v Michael T. Flynn, 10 June 2020