Judge questions if Michael Flynn has perjured himself in his court case

Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan on Wednesday asked whether President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn could be held in contempt of court for perjury.

Sullivan also appointed a retired judge to look into Flynn’s case and argue against the Department of Justice’s request to dismiss it.
Sullivan’s latest move is an enormous flex of judicial muscle six days after the Justice Department said it wanted to drop the Flynn case, unleashing a backlash across Washington of lawyers concerned with the politicization of the Justice Department.

Regarding Sullivan’s perjury question, Flynn has under oath told the judge he is both guilty and innocent of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia during the Trump transition.

Sullivan appointed a retired judge, John Gleeson, to act, in court parlance, as a “friend of the court” or amicus curiae, presenting arguments to the judge “in opposition to the government’s Motion to Dismiss” and on “whether the Court should issue an Order to Show Cause why Mr. Flynn should not be held in criminal contempt for perjury,” the judge wrote.

He co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday, in which he outlined options Sullivan still had to learn more about the case, resolve questions regarding it and how he could, after some legal inquiry, sentence Flynn. The op-ed even made the suggestion Sullivan could appoint a third-party lawyer like Gleeson.

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