Things are getting a little sticky for the FBI in the Michael Flynn case.

Most people who do not follow this stuff closely will not be aware of this, but...... Judge Rudolph Contreras was overseeing the case of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. He recused himself about a week after a plea deal was made. That is HIGHLY unusual. As it turns out, Michael Flynn's appropriate conversions with his Russian counterparts (all incoming NSA Directors do it) were recorded by the NSA, using a FISA warrant, the legality of which has been severely questioned. So........guess who is a judge on the FISA court and a friend of good old disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok? Absolutely correct..... Judge Rudolph Contreras. It isn't public yet but it may be that the very judge who granted the warrant was presiding over the case that resulted. Why else would Judge Contreras recuse himself? He got busted.

When Judge Emmet Sullivan took over the case, things changed markedly. First, the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn have now been shown in official documents to state that they did not believe (not one of them) that Flynn had lied to them. Former FBI Director James Comey also said the same thing in open testimony in front of a Congressional committee. Flynn has said that he was forced to enter a guilty plea because the government was bankrupting him and his family. So... if the FBI, including the former Director, says that they did not think that Flynn had lied, why was he charged? This appears to be the Special Counsel's group telling Flynn, "Help us out or we will destroy you and your family, even though the FBI doesn't think you did anything wrong." Even though a plea had been entered, and, in theory, the case is over, Judge Sullivan made the FBI present all exculpatory material in the case.

Here is the part that most people won't remember...... Judge Emmet Sullivan is the same judge who was presiding over the late Senator Ted Stevens case when the FBI framed Stevens just before an election to get the last vote for Obamacare into the Senate. Stevens barely lost the Alaska US Senate election and then the guilty verdict was thrown out after the election for prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutors had held out evidence that showed that Stevens was not guilty. But, of course, by then, the election was over. It is a really shameful episode in the history of the FBI/US attorney offices. FBI agents and a US Attorney literally rigged an election for a US Senate seat for political reasons. That is why Judge Sullivan always makes exculpatory evidence be presented EVERY time he presides over any case. He was burned by government prosecutors once, in a high profile case, and is not going to let it happen again.

My guess is that even if the guilty plea is not vacated, Flynn will receive little to no sentence because of how suspicious the circumstances are in this case and that the prosecution may be on the verge of misconduct, again. The worst possible scenario for the Mueller team is for this case to actually go to trial because all of the misconduct by the prosecutors, including the justification for the original FISA warrant, would have to come out in the trial. It could also be very embarrassing for Judge Rudolph Contreras.