Mueller's Top Democrat Leaves the Russia Investigation and We Are All a Little Safer

Federal prosecutors Sam Buell, far left, and Andrew Weissmann, center, smile as they talk with reporters outside the Federal Courthouse after winning their case against Arthur Andersen in Houston Saturday, June 15, 2002. A jury on Saturday convicted Arthur Andersen of shredding Enron-related documents, dealing the company a huge blow and giving a first victory to prosecutors investigating Enron’s collapse. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

The top Democrat in Robert Mueller’s merry band of partisan Democrats has announced that he is leaving not only the Mueller investigation but the Department of Justice, leaving our freedoms just a little bit more secure by his departure. This marks the second major departure from Mueller’s investigatory team. The lead FBI agent, David Archey, left last month to become Special Agent in Charge in Richmond, VA.

Weissmann is a particularly odious individual who had a well-established reputation of being willing to ignore the law in order to wring guilty pleas out of the innocent. He first burst on the scene while leading the Enron and subsequent Arthur Andersen investigations. He convinced some feckless and credulous federal district judge to instruct a jury that they could convict defendants even if there was no evidence that they knew they were violating the law. In one fell swoop, he managed to do two things. He set aside criminal law as it has been practiced in English speaking nations since the Magna Carta. And he was unanimously repudiated by the US Supreme Court.

Recent revelations show Weissmann intimidated witnesses and was cavalier about interfering in attorney-client relationships.

The now unsealed records expose efforts by Weissmann, and the Enron Task Force he led, to intimidate witnesses and to interfere in the attorney-client relationship of a cooperating witness. Several affidavits unsealed last week catalogued veiled threats made to witnesses the Enron defendants sought to interview. However, because many of the attorneys would speak only off the record to Enron’s attorneys, the courts refused to consider the affidavits sufficient to prove prosecutorial misconduct.

It is difficult to view Weissmann’s involvement in this investigation as anything but Mueller allowing it to be used for partisan score-settling. Weissmann, for instance, was at Hillary Clinton’s victory celebration on Election Night. He praised Sally Yates for her illegal decision to refuse to defend President Trump’s Executive Order called the “travel ban.” (See my NOT SURPRISED. Top Mueller Deputy Cheered Sally Yates On In Her Refusal To Enforce Trump’s Travel Ban.)

In fact, it appears that Weissmann joined the investigation as a way of hammering Paul Manafort. (See my Does One Of Mueller’s Prosecutors Have A Personal Animus Against Paul Manafort?.)

A senior Justice Department prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel office held a meeting with Associated Press journalists last spring to discuss an investigation into Paul Manafort’s financial record, a day before the wire service published a major expose disclosing alleged money laundering made by the former and now embattled Trump campaign chairman.

Federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, now a senior attorney in the special counsel’s office, met with AP journalists on April 11 after reporters informed him of their own investigation into Manafort’s dealings with Ukrainian officials. The reporters had reached out to Weissman on a different story earlier in the year and it was during that conversation, that the AP team told Weissmann of their investigation into Manafort, stated the sources. The AP published the explosive expose on April 12, a day after their meeting with Weissmann.

According to sources familiar with the meeting, the reporters had promised to share documents and other information gleaned from the own investigation with the Justice Department.

What’s next for a petty little man who looked at ruining careers and destroying lives as a form of entertainment to compensate for his lack of manhood?

Andrew Weissmann, the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, will study and teach at New York University and work on a variety of public service projects, including his longstanding interest in preventing wrongful convictions by shoring up forensic science standards used in courts, the sources added.

Irony is dead.

Curious how an AUSA whose behavior EDNY Judge Sifton called "reprehensible, "uncivilized, "indecent," ends up teaching law school.https://t.co/RbcZkZKqfW https://t.co/OmDsQBPgKL

— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) March 14, 2019

Just informed NYU Law will offer a course in "How to conceal Brady and get away with it." Weissmann is the perfect instructor. https://t.co/5q7b3IzBYG

— Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) March 14, 2019