Attorney General Bill Barr is intervening in the federal government’s case against former Trump National Security Advisor and ally Mike Flynn.
Calling it “highly unusual,” The New York Times reports Barr has “assigned an outside prosecutor to scrutinize the criminal case” against Flynn, who has already pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing.
“The review is highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors,” the Times notes.
CNN confirms the Times’ reporting, stressing that Barr “privately ordered” the re-examination of the case against Flynn.
But Flynn’s case is not the only one being scrutinized.
“Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, the people said.”
The term “outside prosecutors’ is somewhat misleading – these are all federal prosecutors working for the Justice Dept., and thus subject to Barr’s direction and supervision.
More than a year ago at a sentencing hearing a judge went as far as to berate federal prosecutors for apparent leniency in their charging and sentencing recommendation of Flynn, asking if they had considered charging him with treason.
“Could he have been charged with treason?” Judge Emmet Sullivan asked prosecutors. He also asked if Flynn’s conduct “rises to the level of treasonous activity?”
“You were an unregistered agent of a foreign country … serving as the National Security Adviser to the president of the United States!” Judge Sullivan said to Flynn in December of 2018. “Arguably this undermines everything this flag over here stands for!”
“Arguably, you sold your country out,” Judge Sullivan added.
The judge later walked back his remarks, but it indicates the gravity of Flynn’s crime.