An en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Monday denied former National Security Advisor and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s emergency petition for a writ of mandamus. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a conservative who was appointed by President Donald Trump in March 2019, sharply and unsurprisingly dissented from the decision, just as she did when penning the opinion for a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel in June.
An en banc U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Monday denied former National Security Advisor and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s emergency petition for a writ of mandamus. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a conservative who was appointed by President Donald Trump in March 2019, sharply and unsurprisingly dissented from the decision, just as she did when penning the opinion for a three-judge D. C. Circuit panel in June. Rao, in one instance, criticized the majority for permitting U. S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s “unlawful incursions on the Executive Branch.” In another, she said Sullivan was subjecting Flynn to an “inquisition.” “The majority takes a superficially appealing position that the district court must first decide the government’s motion to dismiss before this court may grant a writ of mandamus,” Rao complains near the outset. “In the ordinary course, this is how we proceed. Yet the facts here demonstrate a series of irregularities by the government and the district court. We reserve the writ of mandamus for extraordinary cases, and the circumstances in Flynn’s case are nothing if not extraordinary.” The facts of the Trumpworld passion play vis-à-vis Flynn are well known by now: (1) he was sacked from his brief tenure in the Trump administration for lying; (2) he was caught up in the Russiagate investigation led by then-special counsel Robert Mueller; (3) he allegedly lied to federal agents about his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; (4) he was indicted for lying and twice pleaded guilty; (5) evidence later surfaced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was close to shuttering the Flynn investigation and even wondered if their goal was to get Flynn to lie or to get him fired; (6) President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr leaned on the levers of justice and the U.
