Court challenges to the criminal cases of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone could stretch well into the summer, according to separate court filings Monday, signaling the former Trump advisers will likely face drawn-out battles in court.
Flynn and Attorney General William Barr have been pushing the court for Flynn’s exoneration, while Stone has been trying to avoid reporting to prison. In both instances, the federal judiciary hasn’t budged.
The two criminal cases for weeks have been almost mirror-image hotbeds of political controversy, with critics of President Donald Trump and thousands of former prosecutors accusing the Justice Department of going easy on the Trump associates for political reasons. The back-to-back announcements on Monday highlight how each defendant is expected to face a lengthy court process as they fight their convictions.
The Flynn case – in which a judge made a stunning recent move to bring in an outside lawyer – may not hold arguments until at least mid-June over the Justice Department’s request to drop the case and about whether Flynn perjured himself in court.
Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, previously pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his policy discussions with Russia during the Trump transition, but now claims he is innocent.
Last week, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed John Gleeson, an esteemed former federal judge and New York-based private attorney, to weigh in on the case. Gleeson told the court on Monday he would like to submit his arguments against dropping the Flynn case and on the question of perjury by June 10.
After that, the Justice Department and Flynn’s legal teams should have time to respond and Sullivan could hold oral arguments, Gleeson said in his first formal request in the Flynn case Monday. That process generally takes six weeks or more in court – though it can move faster or slower depending on the judge.
Sullivan didn’t set a timeline when he appointed Gleeson to examine the case independently, and he hasn’t said yet if he’ll follow the suggested schedule, or indicated how long resolving Flynn’s legal tangles might take.
As for Stone, who appealed his sentence after a judge denied him a new trial this spring, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals said Monday it wouldn’t consider his challenges before September.
Stone, who advised Trump in 2016 and is a longtime friend of the President’s, was convicted by a jury of lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering about his efforts in 2016 to protect Trump. He is set to serve 40 months in prison, though he’s appealed his sentence, maintaining his jury was biased.
David Schoen, Stone’s appellate attorney, said his team doesn’t yet know when he would have to report to prison. It’s up in the air especially with the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused prisons to reduce their populations especially of older, nonviolent offenders.
Stone’s team says it plans to ask both the appellate judges and District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who sentenced him, to put his prison sentence on hold. But that hasn’t happened yet.
Written arguments in the Stone case will be finished September 8, and the court will hold a to-be-scheduled hearing for oral arguments after that, the appeals court said on Monday.
