Before Flynn’s case, Sullivan, the son of a police officer, was perhaps best known in the legal community for his dogged support of the Brady rule, named for the Supreme Court ruling that requires prosecutors to turn over to defendants helpful, or exculpatory, evidence.
In 2009, the Justice Department asked Sullivan to dismiss a jury’s guilty verdict against Stevens for campaign finance violations because of government misconduct. Sullivan ordered a special prosecutor to investigate why FBI agents and prosecutors had improperly withheld that key witnesses had given differing accounts.
In October, Trump signed into law the Due Process Protections Act, one of the last bipartisan pieces of legislation passed by the 116th Congress, introduced by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and co-sponsored by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). The law was inspired by a 2017 opinion article by Sullivan and directly amended rules of federal criminal procedure to ensure that prosecutors who commit intentional misconduct may be held accountable through contempt of court or other judicial sanctions.
Addy R. Schmitt, a former Sullivan law clerk, said that in his courtroom, “the government doesn’t get a free ride.”
“He views his job as making sure the government is held in check and doing what it’s supposed to do and that there’s accountability. Any attempt to skirt the process is going to be met with resistance from him. He will not just go along,” said Schmitt, now a criminal defense attorney at Miller & Chevalier.
Sullivan has deep roots in D.C., having graduated from McKinley High School and received undergraduate and law school degrees from Howard University. A product of Houston and Gardner, a storied Washington civil rights law firm, Sullivan has said he was inspired to order a landlord to pay punitive damages to a tenant for “wanton, willful, fraudulent and malicious conduct” after hearing Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall talk about using the law to right social wrongs.
Sullivan has presided over a broad range of cases, spanning high-profile political dramas to a menagerie of lawsuits involving animals. He sided with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in a fight over alleged abuse of Asian elephants and in a separate case upheld the status of polar bears as a species threatened by climate change.
While the Trump administration and then-Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filled more-powerful federal appeals court seats at a record pace, they “left Biden an opportunity to strengthen the Democratic-appointee presence in the district courts, which, as many judges and lawyers will confirm, is where the rubber hits the road (and stays there) for most litigants,” Wheeler said in an email.
Progressive groups last year identified about 100 active judges appointed by Democratic presidents who are retirement-eligible, and who could create additional vacancies for Biden.
More than a dozen judges nominated by presidents in both parties have announced plans to take senior status since Biden took office. Among them are three judges in Maryland: Catherine C. Blake, a nominee of Bill Clinton; Ellen Hollander, nominated by Barack Obama; and Richard D. Bennett, a nominee of George W. Bush.
Sullivan will join seven judges on senior status in Washington’s influential U.S. District Court, which oversees numerous high-profile lawsuits involving the federal government. His retirement leaves Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, appointed in 1997, as the only one of 13 active judges named before Obama took office, including nine named by Obama and four by Trump.
Source: WP wrote the original order.