Mueller Deputy: This Is Where the Special Counsel Came Up Short
Andrew Weissmann breaks down what Robert Mueller should have done during the Russian collusion investigation and how Bill Barr personally ‘betrayed’ the DOJ.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
Hindsight is always 2020, and in this case Andrew Weissmann is pretty sure where Mueller and team came up short. He was part of the team that investigated Enron. He personally promoted former FBI attorney Lisa Page and served as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deputy during the Russian collusion hearings.
He wrote a book about the experience, but came on the newest members-only episode of The New Abnormal to share that insight with co-host Molly Jong-Fast.
When it came down to it, “We didn't have sufficient proof that people in the Trump campaign were trained not to accept anything from foreigners,” says Weissmann.
Also, he adds, “I think we should have said whether we thought he obstructed justice or not. I didn't think we should have used very hard-to-understand double negatives.”
Then there’s the four-eyed elephant in the room named Bill Barr, who Weissmann says no one from his team anticipated “undermining the rule of law.”
But it didn’t take them long in their investigation to figure out what was happening: “After working 22 months on the investigation, we now knew that he was a partisan who was willing to not just bend, but break for, the president of the United States.”
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Speaking of which, Weissmann predicts a lot more “harm” to the justice system if Trump is re-elected for another four years. And if Trump isn’t? It won’t be gumdrops and roses just yet. Things need to change.
“It’s very easy to focus on the president and all of his flaws, but there are many guardrails that have fallen down that should have been a check on what he's doing,” he says.
Weissmann has an unnerving prediction for what Trump will do if he loses. Plus! He breaks down how he got to this place and has some action items to make sure it never happens again.
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