JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
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This Nazi Gestapo cretin is a cancerous tumor on our Republic.
Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann has a reputation for hard-charging tactics — and sometimes going too far
When FBI agents raided the northern Virginia home of President Trump's former campaign manager Paul J. Manafort Jr. on July 26, they came with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
They arrived before dawn, forced the front door lock and burst in with a no-knock warrant, tactics typically used in a major drug bust. The agents seized Manafort's tax, banking and real estate records, photographed his expensive antiques and tailored suits, and hauled away a trove of material.
Manafort, once a high-flying Washington lobbyist, now is awaiting trial on a dozen federal charges, including fraud, conspiracy and money laundering of more than $18 million in an elaborate scheme that prosecutors allege extended through the period he led Trump's campaign. He has pleaded not guilty.
The dramatic case is being helmed, in part, by Andrew Weissmann, a senior deputy to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in the wide-ranging investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump or his aides committed crimes before, during or since the campaign....
Weissmann also successfully argued in U.S. District Court that Enron's major outside auditor, Arthur Andersen, had covered up the losses at Enron and had shredded documents to hide its role. The long respected Chicago-based firm was convicted of obstructing justice and effectively went out of business in 2002.
But Weissmann soon came under fire for having pushed the legal boundaries.
In May 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction of Arthur Andersen. Weissmann had helped persuade the trial judge to advise jurors they could convict the accounting firm regardless of whether its employees had knowingly violated the law.
Writing the court's decision, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist noted that the opposing lawyers had "vigorously disputed'' the jury instructions. The judge, Rehnquist wrote, "failed to convey the requisite consciousness of wrongdoing. Indeed, it is striking how little culpability the instructions required" to convict.
Arthur Andersen never recovered. But when Weissmann stepped down as head of the Justice Department's Enron task force two months later, he had cemented his reputation for unsparing tactics.
Weissmann not only sought stiff sentences for those convicted in the Enron scandal. As the cases unfolded, he named 114 individuals as "unindicted co-conspirators.'' In interviews, several defense lawyers complained that by dangling the threat of prosecution over so many prospective witnesses, Weissmann blocked testimony that could have helped their clients.
Defense lawyers also have argued that Weissmann and his colleagues failed to turn over potentially favorable evidence in some cases. The row arose during separate appeals lodged by a top Enron executive and four officials at Merrill Lynch, a financial firm that Enron relied on.
An appellate court ruled that the evidence was not "material'' enough to have changed the original guilty verdicts. The convictions of three of the Merrill Lynch executives subsequently were overturned for reasons unrelated to the dispute over the evidence.
The episode remains a source of resentment for the defendants and their lawyers.
The evidence would have "contradicted the theory of the government's case at trial,'' Sidney Powell, who represented one of the Merrill Lynch executives during his appeal, wrote in her 2014 book, "Licensed to Lie.''
"Andrew Weissmann is not fit to practice law – much less serve on Mueller's team,'' Powell wrote in an email for this article.
Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann has a reputation for hard-charging tactics — and sometimes going too far
When FBI agents raided the northern Virginia home of President Trump's former campaign manager Paul J. Manafort Jr. on July 26, they came with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
They arrived before dawn, forced the front door lock and burst in with a no-knock warrant, tactics typically used in a major drug bust. The agents seized Manafort's tax, banking and real estate records, photographed his expensive antiques and tailored suits, and hauled away a trove of material.
Manafort, once a high-flying Washington lobbyist, now is awaiting trial on a dozen federal charges, including fraud, conspiracy and money laundering of more than $18 million in an elaborate scheme that prosecutors allege extended through the period he led Trump's campaign. He has pleaded not guilty.
The dramatic case is being helmed, in part, by Andrew Weissmann, a senior deputy to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in the wide-ranging investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump or his aides committed crimes before, during or since the campaign....
Weissmann also successfully argued in U.S. District Court that Enron's major outside auditor, Arthur Andersen, had covered up the losses at Enron and had shredded documents to hide its role. The long respected Chicago-based firm was convicted of obstructing justice and effectively went out of business in 2002.
But Weissmann soon came under fire for having pushed the legal boundaries.
In May 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction of Arthur Andersen. Weissmann had helped persuade the trial judge to advise jurors they could convict the accounting firm regardless of whether its employees had knowingly violated the law.
Writing the court's decision, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist noted that the opposing lawyers had "vigorously disputed'' the jury instructions. The judge, Rehnquist wrote, "failed to convey the requisite consciousness of wrongdoing. Indeed, it is striking how little culpability the instructions required" to convict.
Arthur Andersen never recovered. But when Weissmann stepped down as head of the Justice Department's Enron task force two months later, he had cemented his reputation for unsparing tactics.
Weissmann not only sought stiff sentences for those convicted in the Enron scandal. As the cases unfolded, he named 114 individuals as "unindicted co-conspirators.'' In interviews, several defense lawyers complained that by dangling the threat of prosecution over so many prospective witnesses, Weissmann blocked testimony that could have helped their clients.
Defense lawyers also have argued that Weissmann and his colleagues failed to turn over potentially favorable evidence in some cases. The row arose during separate appeals lodged by a top Enron executive and four officials at Merrill Lynch, a financial firm that Enron relied on.
An appellate court ruled that the evidence was not "material'' enough to have changed the original guilty verdicts. The convictions of three of the Merrill Lynch executives subsequently were overturned for reasons unrelated to the dispute over the evidence.
The episode remains a source of resentment for the defendants and their lawyers.
The evidence would have "contradicted the theory of the government's case at trial,'' Sidney Powell, who represented one of the Merrill Lynch executives during his appeal, wrote in her 2014 book, "Licensed to Lie.''
"Andrew Weissmann is not fit to practice law – much less serve on Mueller's team,'' Powell wrote in an email for this article.
