TEASER: Mueller Deputy: This Is Where the Special Counsel Came Up Short
The New Abnormal with Molly Jong-Fast & Rick Wilson- 647 views
- 1 Nov 2020
Hindsight is always 2020, and in this case, Andrew Weissman 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 Weissman. Also, “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 Weissman 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 that was what was happening. Speaking of which, Weissman 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. Weissman 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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What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episode we are doing for subscribers to Beast inside the Daily Beast membership program. We have a very special guest. Andrew Weissman is the former chief of the criminal fraud section of the US Department of Justice, as well as the deputy in the special counsel team headed by Robert Mueller, as well as author of Where Law Ends Inside the Mueller Investigation. Again, this is for Beast Inside Members, only to hear this, along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes, head to new abnormal DOT, The Daily Beast dot com.
That's New Abnormal Dot, The Daily Beast dot com. It's funny because, you know, I did Lisa Page's first interview and then I met with Peter Struck right after the ad.
Interesting. Yeah. To try to get him to do an interview, which I was not successful at, but I did eventually get him to come on the podcast months later. But so I know a lot, you know, I know they're both huge fans of yours. So for me, it's very interesting to square the circle.
Yeah, well, Lisa, you may have heard Lisa was relatively new in the general counsel's office of the FBI when I was there, and then I promoted her.
Oh, right. Yeah. You brought her to Mueller, right? No, I didn't bring her. She was actually when I got there, she was there and I had actually thought she wasn't going to be there. So I was actually pleasantly surprised. But I was a big fan of hers when I became general counsel and sort of quickly promoted her. And then she rose further because, I mean, she was obviously a star.
That is actually something I'd love to start by talking about, which is there are all of these people like Lisa who are and Pete Stark is a great example to. Right. I mean, some huge percentage of FBI agents were trained by Pete Strock. Right? He's a superstar. Yeah.
The thing with Pete, though, is I knew of him, but I think I'd only met him once before the special counsel.
First, I want to know there are all of these very good government people who have had their lives ruined by Trump. You could say, well, Pete has a book now and Pete has this. But like, ultimately, these people wanted to be just government people. They didn't want to be celebrities. And I'm curious to know, like, do you think there's a place for them back in the government if Trump ever goes away? And also, what kind of effect is this going to have on the federal government going forward?
That's a great question. On the first part, career people don't think about becoming somebody who's tweeted about by the president of the United States or, you know, I remember watching Andy McCabe. He was on I think it was Stephen Colbert and Stephen Colbert started by saying, I bet you never thought you'd be here. No, I watch. And he sort of laugh and be like, not in a million years.
That's not why people go to the government for their careers. They're obviously not doing it for the money. I mean, you make a perfectly fine living, but if you were just motivated by financial gain, that's not what you would do. And my view of people, the Department of Justice and especially at the FBI, where there everybody is career person except for the FBI director. In other words, there's only one presidential appointee is people aren't incredibly patriotic and are doing it for all the right reasons.
There's so many people there who if you look at the American public, if they knew what these people did day in and day out and how hard they work and how dedicated they are, we'd be so proud of them. I had the same reaction when I listen to the people of the State Department testify in the impeachment hearings. I was so proud.
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