Retired Judge Who Will Argue Against Michael Flynn Said Case ‘Reeks of Improper Political Influence’
2:47
The retired federal judge who was appointed Wednesday to argue that Michael Flynn should be held in criminal contempt of court for changing his guilty plea published an op-ed in the Washington Post Monday criticizing the Trump administration.
Retired Judge John Gleeson was appointed by Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is presiding over the Flynn case, both to oppose the Department of Justice motion to drop the case and to argue Sullivan should begin proceedings to hold Flynn in contempt.
In an op-ed titled “The Flynn case isn’t over until the judge says it’s over,” Gleeson and two co-authors wrote (original links and emphasis):
There has been nothing regular about the department’s effort to dismiss the Flynn case. The record reeks of improper political influence. Hours after the career prosecutor abruptly withdrew, the department moved to dismiss the indictment in a filing signed only by an interim U.S. attorney, a former aide to Attorney General William P. Barr whom Barr had installed in the position months before.The department now says it cannot prove its case. But Flynn had already admitted his guilt to lying to the FBI, and the court had accepted his plea. The purported reasons for the dismissal clash not only with the department’s previous arguments in Flynn’s case — where it assured the court of an important federal interest in punishing Flynn’s dishonesty, an interest it now dismisses as insubstantial — but also with arguments it has routinely made for years in similar cases not involving defendants close to the president. And all of this followed a similarly troubling reversal, also preceded by the withdrawal of career prosecutors, in the sentencing of Roger Stone.
The Washington Post played a role in Flynn’s prosecution when columnist David Ignatius reported in January 2017 that Flynn, as incoming National Security Advisor, had spoken to the Russian ambassador. (The leak of Flynn’s name was likely a felony.)
Flynn was later accused of lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to Vice President Mike Pence and to the FBI. The DOJ now says that those lies were not “material” because Flynn was not under investigation.
Both Gleeson and Sullivan were appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
The Coronavirus Has Hurt 90% of Small Businesses in the U.S.
2:33
Nearly 90 percent of small business owners say their companies have been hurt by the coronavirus.
A little over half of small businesses in the U.S. say they have experienced a large negative effect from the pandemic, according to a new survey conducted by the Commerce Department. Another 38.5 percent said they have experienced a moderate negative effect.
Just 7.6 percent of businesses report no effect. A small positive effect was reported by 1.7 percent and a large positive effect by 0.8 percent.
The impact varies across the states. In New York, the center of the outbreak in the U.S., 62.2 percent of small businesses saw large negative effects and another 31.8 percent saw small negative effects, a combined negative of 94 percent. In South Dakota, where Governor Kristi Noem has declined to issue a broad shutdown order, just 32.7 percent of small businesses experienced large negative effects. Small negative effects were reported by 45.1 percent, a combined negative of 77.8 percent.
The effects on small businesses are not necessarily tied directly to the prevalence of the virus. In Hawaii, which has relatively few infections and just 17 coronavirus deaths, 56.6 percent of businesses said they experienced large negative effects and 39.6 percent saw small negative effects. With a combined negative score of 96.2 percent, that arguably makes it worse off than New York.
US Retail Sales Plunged an Unprecedented 16% in April as Virus Hit
BALTIMORE (AP) — U.S. retail sales tumbled by a record 16.4 percent from March to April as business shutdowns caused by the coronavirus kept shoppers away, threatened the viability of stores across the country and further weighed down a sinking economy.
The Commerce Department’s report Friday on retail purchases showed a sector that has collapsed so quickly that sales over the past 12 months are down a crippling 21.6 percent. The severity of the decline is unrivaled for retail figures that date back to 1992. The monthly decline in April nearly doubled the previous record drop of 8.3 percent — set just one month earlier.
The sharpest declines from March to April were at clothing, electronics and furniture stores. A long-standing migration of consumers toward online purchases is accelerating, with that segment posting a 8.4 percent monthly gain. Measured year over year, online sales surged 21.6 percent.
Other than online, not a single retail category was spared in April. Auto dealers suffered a monthly drop of 13 percent. Furniture stores absorbed a 59 percent plunge. Electronics and appliance stores were down over 60 percent. Retailers that sell building materials posted a drop of roughly 3 percent. After panic buying in March, grocery sales fell 13 percent.
Clothing-store sales tumbled 79 percent, department stores 29 percent. Restaurants, some of which are already starting to close permanently, endured a nearly 30 percent decline despite shifting aggressively to takeout and delivery orders.
For a retail sector that had already been reeling, a back-to-back free-fall in spending poses a grave risk. Department stores like Neiman Marcus and J.Crew have filed for bankruptcy protection. Hotels, restaurants and auto dealerships are in danger. Nearly $1 of every $5 spent at retailers last month went to non-store retailers.
by a group of academic economists found that a one-month closure could wipe out 31 percent of non-grocer retailers. A four-month closure could force 65 percent to close.
The plunge in retail spending is a key reason why the U.S. economy is contracting. Purchases at retailers are a major component of overall consumer spending, which fuels about 70 percent of economic activity.
With few Americans shopping, traveling, eating out or otherwise spending normally, economists are projecting that the gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of economic activity — is shrinking in the April-June quarter at a roughly 40 percent annual rate. That would be the deepest quarterly drop on record.
Spending tracked by Opportunity Insights suggests that consumer spending might have bottomed out around mid-April before beginning to tick up slightly, at least in the clothing and general merchandise categories. But spending on transportation, restaurants, hotels and arts and entertainment remains severely depressed.
Credit card purchases tracked by JPMorgan Chase found that spending on such necessities as groceries, fuel, phone service and auto repair declined 20 percent on a year-over-year basis. By contrast, spending on “non-essentials,” such as meals out, airfare and personal services like salons or yoga classes, plummeted by a much worse 50 percent.
No comments:
Post a Comment