CORRUPTION AND ITS BEDMATE, INCOMPETENCE:

Shea's filing on Thursday -- undoing more than two years of work from special counsel Robert Mueller's team and his own office's work on the case -- shocked lawyers across the country, who alleged the undermining of the rule of law for President Donald Trump's political gain. Shea's 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 on Saturday that the ID number under Shea's name was a clerical oversight. The official said it was the mistake of a staffer who submitted the filing to the court on Shea's behalf -- but who didn't sign it herself. The official said Shea was part of a team who wrote the document, and declined to explain why the career prosecutor, Jocelyn Ballantine, who signed several other recent filings in the Flynn case, didn't sign it.

People close to the DC US attorney's office said the mistake isn't one trial lawyers in that office would likely make. And they pointed to the fact that no other lawyer in that office signed the dismissal request as a possible indicator the document was prepared elsewhere, perhaps at the Justice Department headquarters, where Attorney General William Barr was closely managing the Flynn review.

Shea has been previously criticized for doing Barr and Trump's bidding to go easy on associates of the President, first in the case of convicted Trump friend Roger Stone, where Barr directed Shea to override the sentencing recommendations of career prosecutors in Shea's office. The four prosecutors refused to sign Barr's sentencing revision. Now with Flynn, no career prosecutor stepped up to sign the document dropping the case.

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