In New Book ‘Where Law Ends,’ Mueller Investigator Says Special Counsel Feared Confrontation With Trump

Donald Trump successfully bullied ex-Special Counsel Robert Mueller, according to one of Mueller’s senior lawyers on the Russia investigation. The Atlantic’s George Packer previews the forthcoming memoir from prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who says Mueller was intimidated away from subpoenaing the president, a momentous decision for an investigation that stopped short of declaring Trump to have obstructed justice. Weissmann, according to Packer, regrets this and other investigative timidity—not subpoenaing Donald Trump Jr. over the June 2016 Trump Tower “dirt” meeting is another—that he believes compromised Mueller’s high-stakes probe. “When there is insufficient proof of a crime, in volume one, we say it. But when there is sufficient proof, with obstruction, we don’t say it,” Packer cites Weissmann telling a colleague. As well, Weissmann considers Mueller to have made a fateful mistake by trusting his old friend, Attorney General William Barr, who publicly distorted Mueller’s 2019 findings to portray them falsely as “exonerating” Trump.