Andrew Weissmann

speaker

1,068 appearances 9 recordings 5 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 20 May

Andrew Weissmann’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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The Bulwark Daily · S2 Ep1018: Andrew Weissmann and Patrick Gaspard: Naked Corruption · 10 Apr 2025 podcast

Good, good. I am always assuming when you ask that question, you're asking it sort of very limited personal scope, because otherwise, you could go on for a really long time, which is actually the subject of what we're about to talk about.

Oh, my God, there's so much to say. But I just want to make sure people understand because Chris Krebs is a sort of perfect example of what's going on. He was an insider in Trump 1.0. As you said, he was tasked with making sure there were be safe and fair elections. And even though the president was saying with no proof that there was fraud in the election, he said, no, there wasn't.

There was no fraud that changed the outcome of the election. There might be low level stuff, but I mean, that was the sin. And so the claim that the president is doing this in the name of free speech. So let's just remember that this week, The Supreme Court said that the president's violated due process.

You have a judge in D.C., Trevor McFadden, saying that the administration has violated the First Amendment with respect to the Associated Press. The attack on the law firms have been struck down by three judges based on the First Amendment. So the idea that this administration is saying, oh, we're doing this with respect to Chris Krebs saying the truth,

And that is in the name of the First Amendment is, this is, I was just reading 1984 with some of my students. And I mean, this is doublespeak. This is freedom is slavery. War is peace.

And it's more insidious than even that because what the message is, the reason you might be thinking, well, why go after these two people? They're not exactly like household names. This isn't the Fauci's and the Mark Milley's. The message is for the people in the administration now, this will happen to you immediately. if you don't toe the line and say what I think is the truth.

In other words, the truth is what I say it is. And if you deviate from that, this is going to happen. So it's really a strategic use of the executive order and the Department of Justice, which has no separation now whatsoever from the White House.

Well, the norm post Watergate is that the White House does not do that. I'm going to give you an example. I worked on the Enron investigation, and that was under the Bush administration. And there was lots of talk about the then chairman of Enron, Ken Lay, and his ties to the administration.

There was not a single moment in that administration where the administration said what we should be doing, who we should charge, who we should not charge. It was just a given. I'm using that as a deliberate example because it's a Republican administration, and those are norms that Republican administrations followed.

And what separates us is to a rule of law country as opposed to just a transactional country. And that is what we have become. And I think it's so important not to normalize what is happening. There's the substance of what's being done with respect to Miles and Chris, but there's also just making sure people are aware that

This is insidious that the White House would have this role so that they can, I mean, they say they're doing it to counter weaponization, but that again is the doublespeak. This is weaponization of the Department of Justice by a political actor.

Yeah. Well, and also the normalization is nobody within the administration, obviously pushing back. That is a huge difference from Trump 1.0, but you don't have anybody at the department of justice. Remember attorney general sessions was basically canned because he understood whatever you thought of his policies. He understood that the department is different and had to be independent.

And that was his sin, right? You don't have anyone in Congress raising a ruckus about this, that this is such a fundamental challenge to what it means to be a democracy that the department, in spite of the attorney general during her confirmation hearing saying, mouthing the words, it's absolutely clear that's not what's going on.

That's a great question. I think that the chilling effect is real and is happening right now. to just the process of having to hire lawyers, going through the process of defending yourself, that is a cost.

In terms of the president saying that Miles Taylor engaged in treason, well, first of all, there used to be a war going on, a real war, not what he says is happening with the gang TDA invading our country. It was a war. The deep state was engaging in a war against Trump. That's the war. Yeah. Yeah, it's obviously not treason.

I am aware of zero facts, zero, that exist in the real world or even in the executive orders. There's just a dearth of actual facts being alleged that would in any way constitute treason. So, you know, there's no factual predication, which, by the way, this being the weeds for the FBI or the Department of Justice to open a criminal case, they're supposed to have actual factual predication.

They can't just willy nilly say, you know what, we want to look at Tim because we want to see if he's done anything that is violating the attorney general and FBI guidelines. But those seem to be completely false. I'm raising this, you're probably going, oh, Andrew, you're so naive. Because, of course, that is gone.

That idea that you need factual predication to open an investigation is something that went by the wayside.

Yeah, I think that's right. But I also feel like I think the law firms are a good example of this. Even if it goes nowhere... the chilling effect is huge. So I don't know what the University of Pennsylvania's reaction is going to be. If SentinelOne, the company that Chris works with, they, I assume, need their security clearance in order to do some of their work.

So this could have real consequences in the real world. And I think what the administration's counting on is the effect on other people. So like what the University of Pennsylvania will do, what companies will do, thinking, you know what? We want to keep our head down. We don't want to be on the radar screen. So it remains to be seen just how serious it is.

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