The Justice Department on Monday corrected an erroneous attorney identification number used in its shocking filing from last week moving to dismiss the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
A correction notice filed Monday with a different bar number is signed by Jocelyn Ballantine, the assistant US attorney who was handling Flynn filings. Ballantine did not sign the motion to dismiss last week, and was blamed by a Justice Department official for making the ID number mistake.
“The error was not intentional,” the new filing says.
READ: Justice Department request to dismiss Michael Flynn charge
The technical error only added to the twists of the dramatic reversal by the government.
The bombshell court filing was signed only by interim US attorney Timothy Shea, a political appointee who used the court identity number of his ousted predecessor, Jessie Liu.
Shea’s filing on Thursday undid more than two years of work from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and his own office’s work on the case. His signature on the document already raised questions about who within the Justice Department prepared it, why other prosecutors didn’t sign the filing, and why the lead prosecutor on the case withdrew from it an hour before its submission.
A Justice Department official told CNN that it was the mistake of a staffer who submitted the filing to the court on Shea’s behalf. The official said Shea was part of a team who wrote the document, and declined to explain why Ballantine, a career prosecutor who signed several other recent filings in the Flynn case, hadn’t signed it.
Shea listed his DC Bar number on Monday’s correction notice, though the district court’s records still don’t indicate he is admitted to the bar of the court.
The federal judge overseeing the case has yet to respond to the request to dismiss.