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- [00:00]
Andrew Weissman
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Joanna Coles
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Andrew Weissman
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- [01:15]
Andrew Weissman
He has been found repeatedly by federal judges, most recently a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump to have violated the law. And I could go on so much. There's what he's doing in the Epstein case. In terms of Todd Blanche, you could just go on and on and on about ways that he has undermined the rule of law. Congress has every power to say the following. You want to be confirmed the documents are going to be turned over consistent with the rule of law. If you don't turn the documents over, don't expect to be confirmed. If there's not a smoking gun, why hasn't everything been turned over?
- [02:00]
Joanna Coles
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast and today's guest explains why Todd Blanche must never become the Attorney General. I'm talking today to Andrew Weissman, the former general counsel of the FBI. He worked with Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation. He was a federal prosecut who sent the CEO of Enron to jail and he's now post his public service teaching at nyu. But he has very Strong insights into Todd Blanche in particular and the entirely inappropriate way that the Epstein files were just thrown at us. And he says the missing Epstein files contain a smoking gun against the President. Before we go on, I just want to remind you to subscribe to the Daily Beast podcast wherever you get them. Apple, Spotify, YouTube, your support helps us bring these entirely independent conversations. We are independent media and we rely on your support. Let's get into it. Andrew Weissman is with us. Andrew, you have just produced a new book, Lie, which really asks a very fundamental question, which is why is it that politicians are allowed to get away with lying to us? As you point out, we have a liar in chief in the White House. And one of his biggest lies is that he won the 2020 election, which we knew was looked every which way. Endless challenges to it. None of them was stood up. He didn't win the 2020 election. Why is he allowed to continue pretending that he did? Your mum was a psychoanalyst. So I want your version of why Donald Trump in particular does this. But I'm very curious first, from the legal point of view, how is he allowed to get away with this?
- [04:08]
Andrew Weissman
That is a great question. So first, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
- [04:14]
Joanna Coles
So
- [04:16]
Andrew Weissman
that in many ways puts your finger on sort of why I wrote this book. I, for many years was a sort of career federal prosecutor, and I was looking at sort of my life as a prosecutor, thinking about, okay, I prosecuted people who worked for Enron, the senior leadership, and they presented a false story to the market about the state of Enron. They were civilly sued, they were criminally prosecuted. And no one said, oh no, no, no, no, they have a first Amendment right to lie about stock and stock prices. Roger Stone was found after being charged with lying to Congress. He went to trial, as is his right, and he was found guilty because it is a crime to lie to Congress. But I was thinking to myself, well, that's interesting, but it's not a crime for Congress to lie to us. It is a crime to lie to a bank when you're getting a loan or a mortgage. I could go on and on. Rudy Giuliani was found to have defamed Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, the two Georgia election workers. And no one says, oh no, no, no, he had a defame them. He that aren't the law takes that into account, says, no, there are lies that, that are unacceptable. But in this country, in the United States, we have this carve out where unlike all of these other people, by the way, I could go on to like, you know, I, I take medicine, you know, what's on the label, it has, it cannot lie to you about it. There's like, there's truth in advertising just for when you turn on the TV and you see an advertisement, it be the tell the truth. But, but a politician or a candidate for office is allowed to lie. And you know, one very simple answer might be, you know, who passes the laws that decide whether things can be civilly or criminally held liable? It's politicians. So it maybe is natural that they're like, you know, it's like the law for thee and not for me, that they don't hold themselves to the same standard as everyone else. But that is not true of other countries and even other so called western democracies where they have very different laws and different systems, where they have done things that I look at in the book to say, could we do that here?
- [06:57]
Joanna Coles
Right? So you hold up Germany, you hold up Brazil. But before we get to that, why do you think Donald Trump in particular is obsessed by saying that he won the 2020 election?
- [07:11]
Andrew Weissman
So, I mean, I'll give you my theory. I actually start the book with a conversation with my parents. As you mentioned. My mom is a psychologist, my dad was a scientist. And there are many reasons I start that way. But part of it is to sort of be very upfront with like, my mom is sort of in the right area for that question. She has the expertise for sort of why is somebody behaving the way they are sort of. And that, you know, she used to say, look, you know, there are lots of people critiquing Freud, but it is still one of the best ways that we have for understanding behavior to answering the why question. Having said all that, you know, so I don't have that expertise, but I do think some of it is a refusal to ever have to view himself as a loser. Right. That he lost. Just the, the normal things that one does in life, which is as a kid, you, you learn and your parents instill in you that not everything's going to go your way and that the issue isn't losing the issue sort of like how you respond to it and what you do about it. All those things you like, these are just normal things for normal people. So I think there's part of it is that part of it is they sort of tear it all down. The sort of the Steve Bannon like, I'm going to be, I'm going to have an affront on the truth and an assault and you're essentially. You need to believe what I tell you, even when it's before your own eyes. Like, January 6th is a good day, not a bad day, even though we all saw it. And I think he's pretty blatant, just to take something ripped from the headlines. I was struck at a press conference he gave where he was defending his weighing in on what FIFA did in disqualifying somebody from the US Team and this red card system.
- [09:22]
Joanna Coles
Yeah, the player, Foleren Balogan, who. It was unclear if he'd done it on purpose, but he'd sort of come up on another from behind and it looked like he'd stepped on his ankle. He got a red card and was told he would be absent for the next game.
- [09:40]
Andrew Weissman
Exactly.
- [09:41]
Joanna Coles
Against Belgium.
- [09:42]
Andrew Weissman
Yeah. And you know, and we all, by the way, sitting at a couch, have watched a sports game and you know, the entire world has views about referees, but you know what, you scream and you yell and that's that. It's like, because there's a referee and you don't change the rules, and we all live by that. But not Donald Trump. And when he was defending it at a press conference, one of the things that he said is, well, look, now that the guy's back in and the FIFA's changed their view, the United States will either win or if they lose, we will just say that the game was rigged the way I said that the game was rigged with respect to the 2020 election. And it was just so out there that it's like, oh, yeah, that's what you do. It's like you either win or you claim that they cheated. There's no such thing as the possibility that you actually lost and you'd admit it.
- [10:44]
Joanna Coles
So I guess the question is, Andrew, why did 70 million people not care?
- [10:54]
Andrew Weissman
So I don't know the answer to that. I don't know why. What I would say is they didn't care enough. And I suspect that there are multiple reasons for that. In other words, that I'm a big believer in sort of a bell curve. Like, there's probably not one answer for everyone. But it can be a combination of, to borrow a phrase from Hillary Clinton, the deplorables. The people for whom the message of white nationalism is something that attracts them. Now, I don't think that is majority of the people. I mean, President Obama has made this point, which is he was elected, but it still can be a voter bloc. That's significant. There can be people who say, look, I'm not voting based on character. I'm voting on policy and there are things I don't like about this person and that person. There can be a concern that we have media bubbles and that what you and I may see as obviously true and obviously false is not something that's presented to lots of people who get their news in ways where they do not have to rub up against contrary positions. And it's not presented that way, especially with the demise of sort of so called, the sort of major media outlets in terms of their, you know, their pull on who is and who watches. You know, we don't have the sort of three major networks in the United States of abc, NBC and cbs. And so you have this whole range of possibilities. And then you can also look at, you know, who is running for office on the other side. And then sort of just a contrast is that they could have decided that that person had too many flaws. But I think it's probably like a huge combination. My book is about something different in the sense that as long as people are being truthful, that issue of the legitimate question of policy debates or how come people voting for this and not that, or how come they don't see that this person's a bad person or is, is not the kind of, is not a good role model for our children, et cetera. All of that is part of democracy. And it's super important questions. I was dealing with this in my sort of lawyer institutional box of why is it that if somebody intentionally lies about something material, we are not taking action? And if you're not taking action, then who do you have to blame? I mean, there are models out there to hold people to account to say you either cannot run for office or it's criminalized, or there's some period of time that you cannot hold office. Marine Le Pen is a perfect example who is now going to be running, she says, for president, but was barred for a set term of time based on a criminal conviction that was just affirmed. So there are models to say, look, there's certain things that we would not tolerate in any sphere. Why in something so important to our democracy, which is who we're going to vote for and what those people say to us, aren't we owed more Job site moved.
- [14:57]
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- [15:25]
Joanna Coles
I wondered as I read the book, is it because people are just cynical about politicians? They think, well, of course they're going to lie to me. You know, they'll do anything to get elected and then once they're in office, they'll do anything to help themselves. And the weirdness about Trump is his transparency, certainly around Grift, but I think people know he didn't win 2020. They saw January 6th, and it sort of baked into his weirdness of character. And as you say, some people say, well, I'm not voting for the character, I'm voting for the policy. But what are. To your point, there are ways to stop this. There are ways to safeguard politicians being held to account in the way that CEOs are. I mean, the point about the Enron story is these guys went to jail. Arthur Anderson, who was their accountant, went out of business because of your prosecution. No wonder Donald Trump is so afraid of you, by the way. But what are the solutions then? Where are the countries that you've looked that you think they figured this out?
- [16:33]
Andrew Weissman
So just one quick comment, which is, although I think it's obvious that he's lying and I think it's provable that, that it's intentional. And as I mentioned, just one quick anecdote about the red card, but the polling on this is that a remarkable percentage of Republicans believe him, or at least say they believe him, so that the lie does have this pernicious effect. So, as you said, there may be people who actually believe him and still vote for him because they just sort of understand it and they're cynical about politicians. But in some ways I agree with you that people are cynical on this idea that, oh, they all do it, so we shouldn't consider it. I feel like that has to be fought. I mean, how does a democracy work if you just have this view that everyone who's representing you is just going to be a bunch of liars? And one way to deal with that is to have a law that says you can't do it. So England, let's go to the. Go there, because England actually has a very interesting law, and it has a law that if you lie about your opponent in an election, you can be barred from holding that office even if you win. And I think the last time that law was enforced, the candidate who actually won was found by a court to have lied about his political adversary and could not take the seat.
- [18:10]
Joanna Coles
How interesting.
- [18:11]
Andrew Weissman
So little. So this is like what happens when you're like a professor and you, like, research all this stuff is that you find all these sort of very interesting facts. And one of the reasons I started with England is that, you know, we have a president who's so fond of denigrating other countries, I figured England is a pretty hard one to say. Well, it's just England. I mean, that's where, you know, so much of our legal system emanates from them. Brazil has a particularly interesting example, and it has been used with respect to somebody who I write about is remarkably similar to Donald Trump. But Bolsonaro, before he was criminally charged and convicted for engaging in insurrection. So it's like the difference between Brazil and the United States is he actually went to trial and there was a result. The United States wasn't able to get Donald Trump's case to go to trial thanks to the Supreme Court. But before that conviction, Bolsonaro was found civilly liable and precluded from running for office because he materially lied about there being election fraud that resulted in his losing the election when he actually won it. And his bar was, I believe, for eight years under the Brazilian statute. So there is an example of something that can be used not just to prosecute, but also deter, because somebody's going to be thinking long and hard, as they should, about, I want to make sure I'm not saying something that is false and certainly intentionally false. Which, by the way, as somebody who now does a lot of, I would say, journalist adjacent work at MSNow and on a podcast, we all do that. We all make sure that we run things through the standards department and make sure that everything's accurate and that nothing's intentionally false. And no one says, oh, no, that's terrible, it violates the First Amendment, it shouldn't be allowed. We all hold ourselves to that responsibility. And so my view is politicians should.
- [20:32]
Joanna Coles
Right. So, Andrew, what do you do in a situation that we appear to be in at the moment, where the President is claiming almost as his campaign slogan, as we roll up to the midterms in November, that the system is rigged, that the system is. There's so much fraud in American voting that, you know, whatever happens, it's gonna have been rigged. I mean, he's turned this into his. Essentially the essence of his campaign.
- [21:02]
Andrew Weissman
Absolutely. And it's going on now. But you're absolutely right, that that is. That was certainly his campaign to win the presidency the second time. I mean, he was very open about. It's like, you know, I am the victim of all of this fraud, in spite of the fact that There was no evidence. So I tried to avoid the answer, which is that we need to educate the public. Obviously we do. And we need to have more circus classes. Obviously we do. But I'm enough of a lawyer that I want something concrete and I want something that can work potentially. Now. I'm very much thinking about the sort of post Trump period where we have the chance to do something federally, we have the chance at the state level to do something now. Gavin Newsom, actually, shortly after my book came out, tweeted out that he has a new law that criminalizes making false statements in a way to affect the ballot. And I was like, great, that sounds like a good idea. And so one of the things that I was looking at is, in my life, something that worked and works, and we can see it now, is the court system. And not at all levels and not at all times, but especially the district courts, is a place where, as one judge who, when I was working in the Mueller investigation liked to say is, this is a place where facts and law still matters. And it's also because we have a jury system, the public is there and participating. One of the things that always bothers me when Donald Trump or anyone else says, oh, this system is rigged. It was rigged when I was convicted in the E. Jean Carroll case. Found liable once and then found liable a second time. It's so disrespectful of the jurors who are everyday citizens who sat there and listened to the evidence and made a decision. And you know that you had your due process and you can appeal it. One of his appeals was just denied. But it's like one of the beauties of our system is that the public participates and that and judges and having a forum where you can't just say something without backing it up. And that's right.
- [23:37]
Joanna Coles
I mean, we had Robbie Kaplan, E. Jean Carroll's lawyer, on the podcast, and she talks about the differences between the sort of public environment where Donald Trump can say whatever he likes and the reason that he hates being in court so much. I mean, obviously, I'm sure everybody hates being in court in some way. Apart from the lawyers. Sorry, Andrew.
- [23:56]
Andrew Weissman
Apart from the lawyers.
- [23:57]
Joanna Coles
But in the court, you actually have to present facts that the story has to be laid out in a certain way because you have to have facts backing up the claims. And this is why he finds it particularly stressful. Cause he can't create his own narrative.
- [24:14]
Andrew Weissman
Exactly. And one of the examples of that is he was impeached twice. In neither of those cases did he actually go to court, the so called. He didn't testify. He didn't even submit anything to the tribunals, by the way, which if it was intentionally false, would have been a criminal offense. And I think he's very aware that it's like to the public, I can say and do whatever I want and there's no legal accountability. And actually there's been very little political accountability, but there's no legal accountability. And I couldn't agree more that the court system is a place which just operates very, very differently. And it is also where as a society, we do decide factual issues and we decide whether things are true or false and whether they were intentionally false. And we do that every day of the week in matters that are a whole lot less serious. I mean, as awful as the Enron fraud was, lying about stock is a lot less serious than lying about a ballot.
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Joanna Coles
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- [25:59]
Joanna Coles
Well, and they went. I mean, Andy Fastow went to jail, Jeff Skilling went to jail. I mean, there were consequences for it which were very severe and act as a deterrent too, for other CEOs right to lie about their accounting. So what do you make of what's happening at the DOJ right now? Do you think that Todd Blanche, formerly a personal lawyer and overseeing some of the cases we've just referred to with Donald Trump, do you think he will get selected as the next Attorney General?
- [26:35]
Andrew Weissman
I sure as hell hope not. It is not a question that he doesn't have this skill set. It's not that he hasn't been a federal prosecutor. It's not that he doesn't know the rules. It's that he doesn't apply the rules. He has been found repeatedly by federal judges, most recently a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump to have violated the law. And I could go on so much. There's what he's doing in the Epstein case. There's his obstructing, in my view, the investigation at the state level into the murder of Alex Preddy and Renee Goode. The DOJ is not turning over and is opposing turning over the evidence to the state so that they can do an investigation. Why would you ever do that when that is par for the course in any administration I'd ever been in. Again, you could go and just.
- [27:33]
Joanna Coles
I'm just reminding people. Sorry. I'm just reminding people that Alex Pretty and Renee Nicole Goode were killed by the ICE officers in Minneapolis.
- [27:44]
Andrew Weissman
Yep. There was the effort to indict six members of Congress for issuing a video where they reminded. These were six members of Congress who all had law enforcement or military backgrounds or intelligence community backgrounds, reminding people in the military that they have an obligation under military rules not to follow illegal orders. Illegal, not legal. Illegal orders.
- [28:15]
Joanna Coles
Right. So this was the group that included Mark Kelly, Alyssa Slotkin.
- [28:19]
Andrew Weissman
Exactly.
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Joanna Coles
Yeah.
- [28:21]
Andrew Weissman
And under Todd Blanche's watch, they sought to indict all six of them. The grand jurors said no. First of all, grand jurors don't say no in any normal administration because you have the evidence and you present it. I was a Prosecutor for over 20 years. Never heard of it. And so you have that. You have the fact that he has described what happened on January 6 as a grave national injustice, that he wanted to set up a fund. Not only was it that they got pardoned. That's the president's decision, but he also now wanted to help set up a fund to pay them money.
- [29:00]
Joanna Coles
Right. That was the $1.8 billion slush fund, which, in fact, got overturned, didn't it? But that looked like at one point it was going to go ahead and, as you say, give people compensation if they could prove that they'd had the Justice Department weaponized against them. Yes, I think you would have been entitled to apply to that fund. Andrew.
- [29:23]
Andrew Weissman
I have joked about that there is a federal decision from Judge Bates in connection with the various executive orders targeting law firms. One of those executive orders very prominently discussed me and targeted me. And the federal judge who wrote the decision striking down the executive order found that my First Amendment rights were violated by the executive order. So I am a victim. I will not be seeking compensation under the fund under any circumstances, especially now that it appears that it is not going forward. But in terms of Todd Blanche, you could just go on and on and on about ways that he has undermined the rule of law. He has federal judges who are appointed by Democrats and Republicans, as I said, even judges appointed by Donald Trump, finding that the department is doing things that are illegal. And so, to me, it is more upsetting that I know that he knows better. The department is so dear to people who work there, and you have such love for the institution and to the career people. And it was such a privilege that when you. It is especially Hard to see when you know that somebody knows that tradition knows how important it is. And I don't know enough about his psychology, whether it's. He likes power. I don't know what it is, but all I know is the result of it is that he has, I think, really besmirched its history and its traditions. And there's real harm to real people. It's not just sort of like, oh, I love this institution. It's that it causes them to do things. Let's just take the family of Alex Preddy. Aren't they entitled to an independent investigation?
- [31:36]
Ryan Reynolds
Mm.
- [31:37]
Joanna Coles
Mm.
- [31:38]
Andrew Weissman
What about the victims of Mr. Epstein? Could you really think that it's appropriate to do a softball interview of Ghislaine Maxwell, and then she ends up in a camp with a puppy and a yoga mat.
- [31:52]
Joanna Coles
What is happening with the Epstein files, Andrew?
- [31:56]
Andrew Weissman
The way that that should come up, in my view, is in addition to asking all about this Ghislaine Maxwell interview, the reporting about trying to have a fig leaf to make it look like the Department of Justice and the Trump administration was trying to be transparent when the whole goal was to create a look of that, but not to actually be transparent. But the main issue is that the department is sitting on what is reportedly 3 million documents that are not been turned over. And the Congress has every power to say the following. You want to be confirmed? The documents are going to be turned over. Consistent with the rule of law. The statute is clear. Turn over the documents. And if you don't turn the documents over, don't expect to be confirmed. In other words, Congress has all the levers of power it needs, and if it develops the backbone for doing it. And, you know, the Senate is closely divided, but it still would take three or four Republican senators to join the Democratic senators. I say three or four because there's an issue with respect to Mitch McConnell and his health.
- [33:16]
Joanna Coles
Yes, hello. Have you seen any proof of life videos, Andrew?
- [33:19]
Andrew Weissman
I don't. And it's, you know, it's sad. I mean, I'm not a fan of his, but, you know, if he is, if he is in, you know, you know, in hospice, you know, can't take any joy in that. And so. But as a. As a political matter, it changes the number of votes that might be needed here.
- [33:40]
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- [34:10]
Joanna Coles
Also, in terms of, had you been at the Justice Department, what would have been a more effective way of releasing the Epstein files so people could actually understand, understand what's in them? I mean, it feels like there was an enormous tranche. We've already had 3 million, as you say. There's in theory another 3 million to come. It felt like people were just being bombarded, to use their phrase. The zone was fully flooded with Epstein information. And it feels like nobody understands what was in there. A few people have been taken down by a lot of email exchanges. So obviously Bill Cates has come out of this badly. Kathy Rummler has come out of it badly. There are lots of people who've come out of it badly. Prince ANDREW but it also feels like it was a very unloyally thing to do. It just feels like it was chaos in there and it was like a huge haystack that was sort of dumped on the side of the road and people started, started scrabbling their way through it. But there's no sense of actually what was in there.
- [35:19]
Andrew Weissman
So, Joanna, I think that's totally right. And I think the question I would put to you is that there's a reason for that that is not how the Department of Justice and the FBI operates, that the normal course would have been to. And that's leaving aside that of course there will be times where there will be some mistakes, things that weren't produced or some redactions that shouldn't have been made. Leave aside that there will be some human error. That's not what happened here. And the fact that you have this sort of drip, drip, drip, and then in a chaotic way and that you have victims names, personal identifying information, their photos being revealed is either intentional with a chilling effect, or so grossly irresponsible in terms of the people you're supposed to be doing this for and protecting. The idea, to me, that is the, at the very least, it's the incompetence, but it could be worse. But I think the real reason for the chaos is the problem, which is nobody has said to date that every single document that relates to Donald Trump that has his name on it has been produced. The reporting is that is that there was a high level meeting in the Situation Room, of all places, in the White House to discuss how to deal with this issue. There has to be a problem. Otherwise why wouldn't you have just turned everything over and announced to the world that every single document that released to Donald Trump has been turned over? Nobody has said that. And so I think part of the reason that you're seeing this is they have a problem, which is that they cannot turn everything over because they've decided either the President said you can't, or politically they can't, or both. And so I think that accounts for what is a chaotic system. And as what I think is an unlawful system, there's this pending lawsuit, one to have more documents turned over under the Freedom of Information Act. There's another.
- [37:58]
Joanna Coles
This is Katie Fang's request.
- [38:00]
Andrew Weissman
That is the second one. There's one in their Freedom Information act, and then Katie's is under the Epstein Transparency act. And in hers, by the way, one of the responses from the government is, you're right, we should have done that. Which is remarkable because they were like, oh, yeah, we were going to get around to it. Yeah, we're going to get around to it after the judge said, you need to. So to me, it is such an easy thing to have dealt with if there wasn't a smoking gun.
- [38:36]
Joanna Coles
So you still think there's a smoking gun in the files?
- [38:39]
Andrew Weissman
Because then, okay, here's. This is what I would say to people who don't think that if there's not a smoking gun, why isn't everything been turned over? Or at the very least, why wouldn't you just say every single document that has Donald Trump's name on it in any way, shape or form has been turned over? Like, isn't that the simple way to deal with this?
- [39:06]
Joanna Coles
Do you think that Donald Trump has survived the Epstein files and that it all goes away at this point? Do you think people have gotten bored with it?
- [39:16]
Andrew Weissman
I don't know. I look at it as the person who is seeking to be the head of our Justice Department is not complying, in my view, with the law. That alone should be disqualifying.
- [39:32]
Joanna Coles
When you were at the FBI, what was the conversation around Epstein?
- [39:38]
Andrew Weissman
None. I had absolutely none. I mean, I was at the FBI sort of many, many years ago. So at the tail end of Robert Mueller's term, and I think there definitely was an Epstein. And I mean, there was part of the Epstein story, which has nothing to do with the sort of recent Trump administration. It's a story that has. There's lots of questions to be asked about different administrations over time. But in terms of where I I was the general counsel at the FBI in Maine headquarters. A case in the field, a particular investigation would rarely come up to sort of the general counsel's office unless it raised sort of a significant legal issue, but sort of the policy issue or how the investigation's going. It would be the very, very rare case that would somehow hit my radar screen.
- [40:43]
Joanna Coles
What do you make of Kash Patel?
- [40:45]
Andrew Weissman
Nobody can tell me that Kash Patel was the very best person for the job, with the most experienced, with the best judgment, with the most knowledge about the intelligence issues, the terrorism issues. He just isn't. And that's one where the FBI and the public deserve better. So in addition to what I just mentioned, the one I'm not sure I can say this is a silver lining is that the one positive is that he seems so easily distracted by the shiny object, the plane, the perks, the medallions, the, you know, things that.
- [41:37]
Joanna Coles
Trip to the Olympics.
- [41:38]
Andrew Weissman
Yes. Things that are immaterial and not why you do the job, that you sense that he can, he can be kept out of the way to a large extent. Not, not completely. And again, that's not, that's obviously not a positive. You know what I worked for Director Mueller. You know, you want a leader who is working around the clock and who is detail oriented and has that enormous judgment about what to look at and how to keep the country safe. But if you've got somebody who is not ready for prime time, the fact that he can, the worst aspects of that can be curtailed is. I'm not even sure they'd say it's a plan B, but at least it's a way of lessening the harm.
- [42:31]
Joanna Coles
Is the country safer under Donald Trump than it was under Joe Biden?
- [42:37]
Andrew Weissman
I think the answer to that question absolutely has to be that it was safer under Joe Biden. And that is. I'm really not responding as a political matter. Capital P or small P is in the Department of Justice, at the FBI, in the intelligence community, You want people with enormous experience and enormous judgment. It's like you need people with gray hair who are going to be dispassionate, calm, reasoned, who have been, been through huge traumatic events and don't overreact and can think about what have we done in the past, what has worked, what has not worked. I could go on and on in ways that I've seen those kinds of senior leaders react. One of the things you do in government is you want to make sure that those people, you do everything you can to keep them. I remember when I was in government, I'd be like, what can I do to keep Joanna for one more year? Is there anything that when you're like, I've got three kids and there's private schools and I need the money and I have to leave, and I'd be like, joanna, is there anything I can do to get you to stay another year? This is what we need you for. Because it's so important to have that expertise at the table. And seeing Donald Trump jettison that for seemingly no reason other than I don't like the cases you worked on or what your perceived political views are, is not putting the interests of the country first.
- [44:38]
Joanna Coles
Is that anyway that Donald Trump actually was right, that Joe Biden did weaponize the DOJ against him?
- [44:49]
Andrew Weissman
So I think if you ask that question about doj, I think the answer is no. I think that the one case that I have had questions about is at the state level. And the reason I say that is, let me just at the federal level, the way I look at the Justice Department is so first, obviously you could trot out all of the Democrats who were prosecuted. And so it's just not the case that they were like, oh, we're only going to prosecute Republicans and not Democrats. The track record's there for everyone to see. But when you are thinking about prosecuting a case like the Mar A Lago classified documents case, and I did a study with a friend of mine at NYU to look at comparables, people who have done far, far less than what was alleged there are prosecuted every day of the week. And so it would have been abnormal not to bring that case. And they seemingly did everything they could to get those documents back without having brought that case. So it's just, there's zero sense of selective prosecution. Even Judge Cannon in Florida didn't find selective prosecution, which is saying a lot. And I think you could say the same thing about the insurrection case, where there were so many people who were looked at and then charged in connection with January 6, that if you look at the person who is at sort of the top of the food chain, it's like, wait a second, you're going to, you're going to. All these sort of lower level people are going to be prosecuted, but not a top level person. Where I think that there could be a question about sort of overkill and whether it was appropriate is. So Georgia had very much of a duplicative. Not entirely, but it's somewhat of a duplicative set of charges and it sort of fed the narrative of overkill. Because it's like, okay, well, we already have an insurrection case. And in New York, I went to that trial and I became much more of a convert having been there.
- [47:03]
Joanna Coles
Which trial are you talking about?
- [47:05]
Andrew Weissman
In the Manhattan case, it's the so called Stormy Daniels case. The sort of false business records, but it was paying money to essentially not have her negative story come out while he was running for office. So it is a question of sort of voter fraud, but about a salacious sex scandal not coming out and not coming out. Right around the time of the so called Access Hollywood tape. That's the one where
- [47:40]
Joanna Coles
he said he loved to grab women by a pussy.
- [47:43]
Andrew Weissman
Exactly. And so, you know, I could understand why they brought the case. Obviously the jury found that he was guilty, but I think it did feed a narrative of feeling like he was being targeted because there were suddenly so much. I mean, the counter is, well, he did it all. So like, you know, they were responding to what he did. But I do think that there were a number of people I spoke to who were sort of said, okay, you're sort of cheapening the coin of an insurrection case to then have this in comparison. It seems so much less serious.
- [48:26]
Joanna Coles
Smaller fry, right? Small fry. Okay, so a final question. It's interesting to get your perspective on that. Should the Democrats win the midterms, what do you think they should do? Do you think they should be trying to hold people in this current administration to account?
- [48:53]
Andrew Weissman
So that would be very, very hard because right now they don't control the Department of Justice, so they're not going to be able to do that. Let me just give you something we haven't talked about, which is one thing they can do is I think that what we did in Venezuela and the bombing of fishing boats, and to be clear, people, and I am convinced by the numerous people who have written on this that those are war crimes. And if they're not war crimes, they're just straight up murder. So the Congress, if it flips, can pass, as is their right, much stronger laws to prevent the President, who is the commander in chief but doesn't decide when we go to war, they can put a lot more teeth in what we're doing overseas. And to prevent what I think is a nightmare that is going on, whether we're talking about Venezuela, whether we're talking about the war in Iran, which the President has said, I don't want to call it a war because then I'd have to go to Congress and get approval. So there's so many ways in which Congress has been very asleep in terms of being a Czech. Of the three, we're supposed to have a system of checks and balances. Well, one of our branches is not fulfilling that role.
- [50:32]
Joanna Coles
Definitely not fulfilling that role. Andrew Weissman, your book Liars Kingdom raises really interesting questions about why are politicians allowed to lie to us? Why do we let them get away with it? Why don't we demand better? And you have all sorts of solutions. So highly recommended read. And I very much hope you will come back again and talk to us about incredible issues that are going on in plain sight, not least the dismantling of the Department of Justice. Because your perspective is incredibly helpful.
- [51:08]
Andrew Weissman
It would be my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
- [51:15]
Joanna Coles
Wow, a smoking gun in the episode Epstein Files, which is why there are still 3 million of them still to be released. Call your congressperson now. Call your senator now and demand the release. On behalf of the victims. On behalf of the victims. If you have been. Thank you for joining us. We'll be back tomorrow with David Rothkopf. And meantime, don't forget to smash the subscription button. And a big thank you to our production team, Ryan Murray, John Romero, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus and Max Shaw, the intern. So the good news is we have so many beebeast tier members now there are too many names to read out and we really appreciate your support.
- [52:04]
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