Andrew Weissmann, one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s top prosecutors, should be investigated by the U.S. attorney conducting a criminal inquiry into the Russia investigation, according to a former lawyer to President Trump.
After Trump commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone, a target of Mueller’s special counsel operation, Weissmann tweeted that the longtime Trump associate should be put “in the grand jury to find out what he knows about Trump but would not tell.”
John Dowd, who was Trump’s attorney during the Russia investigation, dismissed the suggestion.
“Weissmann and his dream team failed in their first attempt to manufacture a crime and want to further abuse the process when their sorry effort has been exposed,” Dowd told the Washington Times. “The Stone indictment did not allege a crime by President Trump. So why further abuse the process except more sour grapes? Mr. Durham ought to take a hard look at Mr. Weissmann’s conduct on the dream team.”
U.S. Attorney John Durham is overseeing an inquiry into whether crimes were committed during the Russia investigation, which Democrats have criticized as a partisan effort to discredit Mueller’s work.
Stone, a longtime confidant of Trump, had been convicted of lying to congressional investigators about his alleged outreach to WikiLeaks, obstructing a congressional investigation, and attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness.
Striking a similar tone to Dowd, a vocal critic of the Russia investigation, the White House released a statement Friday evening announcing that Trump had signed a grant of clemency, calling Stone, 67, a “victim of the Russia Hoax.” With the commutation, Stone’s 40-month sentence, supervised release, and unpaid fine were wiped away days before he was set to go to prison. Without a pardon, Stone maintains his criminal record.
Weissmann, a former Justice Department official and FBI general counsel who was known as Mueller’s “pit bull” during the Russia investigation, played an instrumental role in winning convictions against former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and other allies of the president have raised concerns about Weissmann meeting with Associated Press reporters in April 2017 to discuss the Manafort investigation.
After Mueller wrote a Washington Post opinion piece over the weekend defending the Russia investigation and stressing that Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightfully so,” it was announced that Weissmann will have a book coming out in September about the Russia investigation.
Mueller’s team wrapped up its two-year investigation in spring 2019, concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” but it “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign. Mueller also laid out 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice, which Democrats saw as a road map for impeachment. Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that Trump hadn’t obstructed justice.
