Well, maybe not so mysterious. [1]
The case against former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn has taken a strange turn, as U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras abruptly recused himself Thursday night with no explanation. Contreras is an Obama appointee who also sat on the FISA court while the Trump team was under surveillance by the Obama administration.
I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody.
And, while the article goes on to suggest that the judge that is actually replacing Contreras is a Clinton appointee, I see several references to his being appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1984. If these other references are true, that certainly puts a shaft of sunlight on what otherwise has been a dismal time for the FISA court.
However, this starts to get a little strange… [2]
What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynn’s recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency.
In other words, the Justice Department wasn’t seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak – the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts.
For Americans who worry about how the pervasive surveillance powers of the U.S. government could be put to use criminalizing otherwise constitutionally protected speech and political associations, Flynn’s prosecution represents a troubling precedent.
… Which raises the question of why the judge is recusing himself now, particularly. One gets the distinct impression that things are being uncovered that make the judge or his betters more than a little bit uncomfortable.