BCS Barclays PLC

By Aruna Viswanatha and Brent Kendall 

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, whose sharply critical courtroom comments Tuesday toward Mike Flynn led the former national security adviser to delay his sentencing, has in many cases chastised the opposite side by taking the government to task.

In a 2010 case, for example, Judge Sullivan demanded to know why prosecutors weren't charging employees of Barclays PLC, given that prosecutors had reached a deal for the bank itself to pay $298 million to resolve charges that it helped move money for customers from sanctioned countries.

Judge Sullivan ultimately approved the agreement, but he described it as a "sweetheart deal" and said the public would wonder if Barclays was getting "a free ride." He asked prosecutors, "You don't believe the government has put on the kid gloves here?"

The judge may be best known for overseeing the high-profile prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican convicted in 2008 of accepting and concealing tens of thousands of dollars in free home renovations and other gifts.

Judge Sullivan later threw out the conviction at the Justice Department's request when problems emerged with the way prosecutors had shared evidence. "In 25 years on the bench I have never seen anything approach the mishandling and misconduct I have seen in this case," the judge said.

He appointed an investigator to examine the prosecution, and that years-long inquiry found serious lapses in the Justice Department's handling of the case.

Judge Sullivan's targets, however, aren't limited to the Justice Department. In 2016, he threw several curve balls at the Federal Trade Commission, rattling the agency's lawyers as they challenged a proposed merger of office-supply superstores Staples and Office Depot.

The judge, nominated in 1994 by President Clinton, questioned the FTC's handling of a witness from Amazon.com Inc. He was so hard on the commission's lawyers that Staples and Office Depot attempted the risky move of resting their case without a defense. The strategy backfired, and the judge ruled for the FTC.

In 2015, Judge Sullivan threatened to hold John Koskinen, then commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, in contempt of court when the agency didn't comply with an order to provide documents. The conservative activist group Judicial Watch had sued the agency to obtain the material under the Freedom of Information Act, saying the IRS had targeted conservative nonprofit groups as they applied for tax-exempt status.

Threatening an agency head with contempt is rare, but Judge Sullivan said it was merited. "In the event of noncompliance with future court orders, the commissioner of the IRS and others shall be directed to show cause as to why they should not be held in contempt of court," the judge said.

His wariness of government lawyers was reflected in an op-ed he wrote in The Wall Street Journal last year, commending New York state courts for requiring that trial judges issue orders in criminal proceedings notifying prosecutors of their obligations to turn over favorable evidence to the defense, known as a Brady order.

Judge Sullivan now issues such orders in all of his cases, as he did when he was assigned the Flynn matter.

"My wake-up call to the importance of Brady orders came when I presided over the deeply flawed trial of Ted Stevens," Judge Sullivan wrote in the opinion piece, adding that "judges have a responsibility to take action against unethical prosecutors."

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com and Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 18, 2018 17:47 ET (22:47 GMT)

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