It's Official, Russians Corrupted The Election

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The court decision dismissing charges against Michael Flynn is astonishingly bad
Neomi Rao rides again.

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/24/213018...robert-wilkins

Judge Neomi Rao’s opinion in In re: Michael T. Flynn is simply astonishing.

It involves the Justice Department’s surprising decision to drop charges against one of President Trump’s former top aides — nearly three years after that aide plead guilty to lying to the FBI. And Rao’s opinion takes extraordinary liberties with the law.

Her opinion asserts jurisdiction over a case that Rao’s court has no right to hear. It relies on a rarely invoked process that the Supreme Court described as a “drastic and extraordinary remedy” that’s “reserved for really extraordinary causes.” And it keeps a trial judge from hearing arguments that Rao and one of her Republican colleagues, Judge Karen Henderson, apparently believe that the trial judge shouldn’t even be allowed to ponder before making a decision.

Nor is Rao’s opinion in Flynn out of character for the recently appointed jurist. In less than two years on the bench, Rao has repeatedly handed down opinions benefiting Trump and his aides that rely on highly dubious legal reasoning.

The only saving grace of the court’s decision in Flynn is that Rao and Henderson are far-right outliers on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. There is a chance that the full court — which has the power to reconsider Rao’s opinion even if no party requests such a reconsideration — will toss Rao’s opinion in the trash.