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
Meritocracy, that's interesting. So Tim, these are people who are protected. They're not at-will employees. You have to have a reason, a good cause reason to fire them. Why is that? Why do we not want, and we want a sort of civil service protection? Precisely so that every four years with a change of administration,
You don't just put in a bunch of loyalists because the idea is the facts and the law don't change. And people are just going to be there doing their job based on the facts and the law and not based on being a political crony of what the next administration wants. That's the ethos. That is why this all came to exist in sort of post-Tammany Hall. So to fire those people, you have to have good cause.
So if they bring a lawsuit, I think they win. But the damage is done. But to me, one of the first things the acting attorney general did was fire these people. This is the head of our law enforcement agency. As a first step is just saying, you know what, I don't believe in civil service.
Exactly right. That's exactly right. And there was more grounds legally for what they did. It was more sort of politically legal. One of the things that was part of that scandal was with respect to removal of U.S. attorneys, the sort of heads of various prosecuting offices around the country.
But there also was somebody on staff who was stripping out, at least this is the accusation, stripping out from the honors program people who were identified as sort of liberal or Democrats. That's totally improper to do that. And here, one of the things that's happened, and I know this because I'm now teaching a law school, is summer positions all on hold. People told the offers are rescinded.
The honors program, which is new attorneys, it's a huge, wonderful way for DOJ to get us as a pipeline, the very best and brightest from clerkships. There's going to be somebody close to me that just got frozen on this exact thing. Exactly. Done. Employees who are still in their first year probationary period all put on a list to see who's going to be fired.
The idea then is to really strip out as much as they can the civil service protections to create room for, in my view, it's like a bunch of loyalists.
This is sharing government information with private companies. The reporting on that is particularly shocking. I mean, that is this is akin to saying, oh, you know what? Elon Musk wants all of our health care records. I mean, it's like, I mean, I'm sorry. He wants all of our financial records. Like, I mean, talk about big brother.
Yes, a lot of this is going to end up there. You know, at some point you wonder just how much the Supreme Court's going to try to keep their head down. And, you know, if for some reason, let's say in birthright citizenship, if the appellate courts are all sort of uniform, then they may not need to step in on it because they're going to be sort of front and center.
But essentially their decision last year in the presidential immunity case, where they basically had this vision that,
of an all powerful executive branch is one that Donald Trump is taking to the extreme, not just saying there's a unitary executive, meaning that he's in charge of everything that happens within the executive branch, but he seems to have a view, which is I'm in charge of everything that happens in every branch.
So, you know, I can do things and I can actually say things that violate a congressional statute because it violates my presidential powers. So he is sort of this really beyond maximalist view, and it's been analogized as just a dictatorial view. I don't think at that maximal level, I'm not sure he's going to have five votes on that.
I think Roberts, for instance, as much as he has this view of an extremely broad executive power position, I think that's a bridge too far. And so... That's just four, though. Yeah, well, it's four. I think he's four and Amy Coney Barrett, I think, is five.
You know, on the presidential... Again, this is all speculation, but on the presidential immunity decision, I actually think her concurrence was a very rational... way to try and deal with the issues. And if that had been the majority opinion, I think we all would have been like that made a lot of sense. I mean, I really do think she's somebody to keep an eye on.
And just one more data point for her. You may remember there was a case called Fisher, which had to do with the obstruction statute that was charged with respect to many, many, many January 6th defendants. She wrote the dissent in that case. She actually authored the dissent saying that the statute as written completely supports what the government did here and the charges here.
That was the charge about like interfering with a proceeding, a formal proceeding. Exactly. Whether you're obstructing sort of the congressional effort, whether it was enough to sort of be physically attacking it and physically disrupting what Congress was doing, or whether there had to be some effect on papers or records.
The majority sort of narrowed the statute, and she was like, that's not what the statute says, and it makes no sense. And she wrote a very cogent dissent. My big point is not whether you agree or disagree with her on that decision, is it was interesting that she was writing the dissent.
Well, it's Russia. This is the patronage oligarchy. This is why Putin's fabulously wealthy. It's like he's got the levers of power and he's got the ability to decide how difficult your life's going to be. And you have Paramount saying, well, I'm concerned about a merger, so we're basically going to pay a bribe. That is the way it reads.
And you have other examples of that, whether it's CNN settling its lawsuit, whether you have sort of capitulation issues with Jeff Bezos saying, you know, we're not going to take a position on endorsing a presidential candidate because we don't like the fact that it would make us appear to be biased one way or the other.
But at the same time, he then goes to the inauguration and is in the front row, which, of course, that would have no appearance whatsoever. So you're seeing over and over in these kinds of examples, but the idea of the lawsuits is really an example of just a patronage system that is exactly what happens when you have oligarchs, where you're just paying off that money.
Showing 1041–1060 of 1,068 · page 53 of 54
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