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 · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
than what he was saying and has been saying and is in his book in writing. I found the whole thing sort of appalling when you looked at what he was saying now versus what he was saying a minute and 32 seconds ago.
Like that was just the whole thing. I totally agree here. Let me give you an example of sort of very specific, which is he was asked a lot about having been in the grand jury and, in connection with the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Why was he put in the grand jury? Well, presumably it's because he was on a podcast on May 5th, 2022, where he said, I know that Donald Trump
issued an order to declassify documents that are at Mar-a-Lago. I was there when he ordered the declassification of those documents. So he's there to sort of provide some kind of defense. And so the government puts him in the grand jury.
He asserts the Fifth Amendment, which, as Adam Schiff pointed out, must be the very first time that somebody who's being proposed to be the director of the FBI has taken the Fifth Amendment. Fifth Amendment means that you have a good faith belief that a truthful answer to the questions would incriminate you in a crime. He is then immunized and forced to testify.
And he's asked sort of over and over again about that and dodges and weaves and he gets the law wrong about whether he can speak. But ultimately, he says no. I have no idea what documents are at Mar-a-Lago. So I wasn't there. I don't know what documents are there in Mar-a-Lago.
How do you square that with, I know that Donald Trump declassified the documents at Mar-a-Lago with a statement that I don't know what's at Mar-a-Lago? I mean, completely inconsistent. That's again, as a former prosecutor, that's exactly what you look for. You look to defend and you're like, I can't wait for this cross-examination.
There's no way that you can say, I know he declassified documents at Mar-a-Lago when you simultaneously under oath say, I have no idea what's at Mar-a-Lago.
How about Grassley saying, you know, we're looking forward to you restoring the reputation and integrity of the FBI, which is, you know, has its reputation right now is at historic lows. And thank God we have this white knight coming in to save it, which is.
So Alice in Wonderland, when the reason it is in that shape in a large part is because Kash Patel for the last four years has been denigrating the FBI and making up a false story that they were the ones behind January 6th. And so you're sitting in a hearing where it's just as people in MSNBC say, it's Earth 2. It's just divorced from reality.
Well, one, there's already reporting that senior officials at the FBI are being told to either resign. If they don't resign, they will either be fired or they'll be demoted.
beggar's belief. And also, did you see the Grassley said, you know, if you want to answer, because if not, we can just move on. I mean, what the hell is that? I mean, it's like, let me just step in and protect you from a hard question. I mean, it was just shocking. I mean, there either is going to be a true hearing or not. But I want to make sure people understand that
That does not happen at the Bureau. These are career people. They're protected by all sorts of civil service requirements. Obviously, if somebody is not doing a good job, then they can be demoted. But the idea that You just get rid of your senior leadership that have been there for years and years, have tons of experience.
They're in those positions because of that longevity of knowing what they're doing. And the so-called seventh floor is typically filled with the best at the bureau. And you need them. For a whole host of reasons. You know, you think that there are mistakes that the FBI makes. Well, you know what? If those people on the seventh floor weren't there, there'd be a whole lot more.
And so this is really unheard of. Institutional knowledge. Exactly. And just judgment. Good judgment is so important, and a lot of that comes from the experience of having lived through lots of cases, also just how to be effective. I mean, people, I don't think, understand when this whole idea of anti-experience, that anybody can do the job. No, that's not true.
The judgment and ability to be able to sift through what is noise and what is real is critical in all sorts of ways, but particularly in national security, where there's tons of noise. And the art, I remember Robert Mueller saying this, the art is knowing noise. What is the thing to focus on? What is the thing that causes the most concern? And that is what we count on to prevent bombs going off.
I mean, there's not a single person at the hearing and Kash Patel's hearing who had the audacity, no Republican had the audacity to say, no, this man is the best person for the job. Of all of the people in the entire country, this is the guy. But you know what? That's supposed to be the standard.
Who is the best person?
Big picture and small picture. So obviously, big picture is you need a director and a bureau that's going to be governed by facts and law. So if you believe that the FBI is the one that fomented January 6th, that's just not true. And so not being governed by facts, that's how you do an investigation. You're ultimately going to need to go to court and prove things.
So you need to know what the facts are and be able to establish it. It's all good and well to spout off things at a hearing, to write whatever you want in a book. That's not the way the FBI works and it's not where the courts work. at least so far.
In terms of specifics, so this idea that we can just take everybody from headquarters and move them to the field, having been in both situations, been in the field and been at headquarters, I mean, obviously there's great work that happens in the field, but again, from a national security perspective and the intelligence community, it's That really has to be coordinated through headquarters.
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