In a feature story, The Federalist reporter Margot Cleveland reviews new records that expose efforts by special counsel attorney Andrew Weissmann to intimidate witnesses and to interfere in the attorney-client relationship of a cooperating witness. While this material is specific to the now textbook famous miscarriage of justice in the Enron Case, it raises the question: Are government attorneys above the law? If so; what is just about that?
Every business executive and especially those in politically targeted industries (oil and gas for example) should carefully review these records. Setting aside the current travesty of political prosecution in special counsel conduct apparently plotted within the top levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to overturn the election of President Donald J. Trump; every business in any field could become a target based on some fabricated political or media narrative.
Wacko environmentals have engaged in slanderous demagoguery, for another example, against lumber companies in California. Now underbrush in overly dense forests feed fires that destroy homes, burn towns and kill people.
None of this is new. Jesus of Nazareth is quoted by Luke (11:46) “Pity for you lawyers… because you load on men burdens that are unendurable, burdens that you yourselves do not move a finger to lift.” (The Jerusalem Bible, 1966).
Cleveland begins: Nearly four months ago, Houston-based attorney Kevin Fulton filed, on my behalf, a motion to unseal records in a case headed by Andrew Weissmann, who is now a member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Late Thursday, a federal district court judge in Texas granted (with one exception), the motion to unseal, making some of those documents publicly available for the first time.
The sealed records involved the Enron case Weissmann oversaw prior to his abrupt departure from the Enron Task Force in the middle of jury deliberations. Given Weissmann’s current role as Mueller’s “pit bull,” revisiting the allegations of misconduct leveled against the prosecutor—with the benefit of the entire unsealed record—promotes transparency and the public’s interest in trusting the integrity of the special counsel’s team.
The now unsealed records expose efforts by Weissmann, and the Enron Task Force he led, to intimidate witnesses and to interfere in the attorney-client relationship of a cooperating witness. Several affidavits unsealed last week catalogued veiled threats made to witnesses the Enron defendants sought to interview. However, because many of the attorneys would speak only off the record to Enron’s attorneys, the courts refused to consider the affidavits sufficient to prove prosecutorial misconduct.
Two attorneys, however, were willing to testify. In a just-unsealed affidavit, one lawyer stated that an FBI agent working for the Enron Task Force overseen by Weissmann warned his client against talking to the Enron defense team because “those are bad guys.” The second attorney stated that an FBI agent had made veiled threats against his client in a separate Enron trial. Click here for more from The Federalist.