Attorneys Who Worked with Mueller And Team: They’re Not Interested in Justice

Several attorneys who have worked in the past with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and members of his team running the Russia collusion probe, have written op-eds recently accusing them of engaging in questionable tactics in past cases and calling into question their pursuit of justice.

Harvey Silverglate, a criminal defense attorney in Massachusetts, wrote an op-ed for WGBH News on Tuesday that said Mueller wasn’t the choirboy everyone in the media was trying to paint him out to be, and he accused Mueller of once trying to entrap him when Mueller was acting U.S. attorney in Boston.

I have known Mueller during key moments of his career as a federal prosecutor. My experience has taught me to approach whatever he does in the Trump investigation with a requisite degree of skepticism or, at the very least, extreme caution.

 When Mueller was the acting United States Attorney in Boston, I was defense counsel in a federal criminal case in which a rather odd fellow contacted me to tell me that he had information that could assist my client. He asked to see me, and I agreed to meet…He was prepared, he said, to give me an affidavit to the effect that certain real estate owned by my client was purchased with lawful currency rather than, as Mueller’s office was claiming, the proceeds of illegal drug activities.

My secretary typed up the affidavit that the witness was going to sign. Just as he picked up the pen, he looked at me and said something like: “You know, all of this is actually false, but your client is an old friend of mine and I want to help him.” As I threw the putative witness out of my office, I noticed, under the flowing white shirt, a lump on his back – he was obviously wired and recording every word between us.

Years later…Mueller, half-apologetically, told me that he never really thought that I would suborn perjury, but that he had a duty to pursue the lead given to him. (That “lead,” of course, was provided by a fellow that we lawyers, among ourselves, would indelicately refer to as a “scumbag.”)

This experience made me realize that Mueller was capable of believing, at least preliminarily, any tale of criminal wrongdoing and acting upon it, despite the palpable bad character and obviously questionable motivations of his informants and witnesses.

Silvergate wasn’t the only with a dubious opinion of Mueller and his team. Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor, penned an op-ed for The Hill, in which she took aim at Andrew Weissmann, the prosecutor tapped by Mueller to help lead the investigation, Powell accused him of prosecutorial overreach in past cases and said it could signal what’s to come for President Trump and his associates in the Russia probe.

Much has been written about the prosecutorial prowess of Robert Mueller’s team assembled to investigate allegations of Russia’s involvement in the Trump campaign. Little has been said of the danger of prosecutorial overreach and the true history of Mueller’s lead prosecutor…

The Mueller investigation has become an all-out assault to find crimes to pin on them — and it won’t matter if there are no crimes to be found. This team can make some…Weissmann, as deputy and later director of the Enron Task Force, destroyed the venerable accounting firm of Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs worldwide — only to be reversed several years later by a unanimous Supreme Court.

Next, Weissmann creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron. Four Merrill executives went to prison for as long as a year. Weissmann’s team made sure they did not even get bail pending their appeals, even though the charges Weissmann concocted, like those against Andersen, were literally unprecedented.

Weissmann’s prosecution devastated the lives and families of the Merrill executives, causing enormous defense costs, unimaginable stress and torturous prison time. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the mass of the case.

Powell specifically indicated that Weismann’s strong-armed tactics against Manafort were tending toward a travesty of justice and that he in particular should be removed from the case.

Weissmann is intent on indicting Manafort. It won’t matter that Manafort knows the Trump campaign did not collude with the Russians. Weissman will pressure Manafort to say whatever satisfies Weissmann’s perspective. Perjury is only that which differs from Weissmann’s “view” of the “evidence” — not the actual truth.

We all lose from Weissmann’s involvement. First, the truth plays no role in Weissmann’s quest. Second, respect for the rule of law, simple decency and following the facts do not appear in Weissmann’s playbook. Third, and most important, all Americans lose whenever our judicial system becomes a weapon to reward political friends and punish political foes.

There is little doubt that Mueller has assembled a team with the expressed intent of finding a crime! To quote Silvergate, when approaching Mueller, just because he claims a crime, won’t make it so. He just wants the publicity, and facts won’t keep him from manufacturing something if he has to.