Harry Litman - DOJ and Flynn Collude to Raid Taxpayer Coffers

On March 3, 2023, Flynn filed suit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), seeking $50 million. The complaint reads less like a legal pleading than a political manifesto. It strings together a maximalist account of FBI bad faith, speculating freely about investigators’ motives and adopting wholesale the narrative that the Russia investigation was not just flawed, but fundamentally corrupt.

In the new Wonderland version, Flynn’s guilty plea became the product of entrapment. Crossfire Hurricane was illegitimate from the start. The Strzok-Page affair was thrown in for color. It was the complete MAGA narrative, dressed in the language of tort law.

Even setting aside the merits, the legal hurdles were enormous. The FTCA is not a general compensation scheme for grievances against federal law enforcement. It is a narrow waiver of sovereign immunity, typically limited to concrete out-of-pocket harms such as attorneys’ fees or demonstrable damages.

FTCA claims also face strict jurisdictional limits: claimants can’t collect for officials’ determinations that turn on the exercise of discretion—for example, a police officer’s decision to use force on a frothing crowd. Most importantly, malicious prosecution claims under the FTCA are extraordinarily difficult to sustain—a plaintiff must show both that the prosecution terminated in his favor and that it was brought without probable cause.

https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/doj-lets-flynn-help-himself-to-taxpayer