Where Law Ends summary

The call from the Special Counsel’s Office came in late May 2017. Weissmann sat down for a meeting with Mueller and two colleagues who were already on the team. Jim Quarles had worked on the Watergate case that had brought down Richard Nixon in the 1970s. Aaron Zebley, who Weissmann had worked with at the FBI, was always eager to weigh all the options and find a compromise, making him a counterweight to Mueller’s more decisive temperament.

During that meeting, Weissmann learned what the parameters of the Special Counsel were, and how the teams were set up. He didn’t have to spend too much time deliberating; he quickly decided to say yes to joining the team.

Quickly, Weissmann was getting a good idea of who Paul Manafort was. He was the kind of guy who spent $100,000 a year just on the gardening bill for his Hamptons estate. His clothing budget was in the millions, and his wardrobe included a $15,000 ostrich-leather jacket. He was the kind of guy whose own daughter said that he had “no moral or legal compass” and that his wealth was “blood money.”

Where was this money coming from? According to the FBI investigators Weissmann spoke to, two of Manafort’s main benefactors in recent years were suspected to be Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who coordinated his activities with the Kremlin, and Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych’s political party.

One of the other ongoing Manafort investigations that was incorporated into the Special Counsel’s case came from the FARA Unit of the Department of Justice. FARA refers to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

To put it simply, it’s illegal for people to lobby the US government on behalf of foreign interests without first registering those activities with the Department of Justice. But the FARA Unit is understaffed, and so this law is seldom enforced. First, it has to be proven that the foreign lobbyist was aware of the FARA laws and knowingly defied them. More often than not, offenders register once they’re confronted, and no charges are filed. But in Manafort’s case, the evidence of his illegal activity was indisputable.

While the case against Manafort was moving along quickly, strides were also being made on Team 600. This was the team dealing with the issue of obstruction as it pertained to the firing of James Comey and FBI investigations surrounding Michael Flynn and Russian election interference.

Flynn, who’d been the administration’s national security advisor, had been caught lying to the FBI about the nature of a recorded phone conversation he’d had with the Russian ambassador to the US. But what Team 600 was interested in was whether Trump had tried to interfere with the FBI investigation into Flynn, as well as the ongoing investigation into election interference.

In the months that followed the discovery of the draft letter regarding Comey’s firing, interviews with White House staff only served to confirm the suspicions of Team 600. Multiple people explained that Trump had made up his mind about Comey long before Rod Rosenstein’s recommendation that the FBI director be fired.

In fact, Trump even went on national television to say that “regardless of [Rosenstein’s] recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.” The reality is that, technically speaking, the president doesn’t need a reason to fire the director of the FBI. But that doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t also obstruct justice in this instance.

Despite the fact that Donald Trump continues to deny Russian election interference, it happened – and it continues to happen today. Months after the Special Counsel’s report, a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, coming from a Republican-led Senate, concluded that the Internet Research Agency had operated “at the direction of the Kremlin” to support Donald Trump and harm Hillary Clinton. Regardless, Trump prefers to shake hands with Putin and take his word that Russia wasn’t involved.

But what is perhaps most troubling is that there has yet to be a team or task force assigned to neutralize this threat. The message from the Trump administration seems to be, “If it’s helping Trump, why would we try to stop it?” This brings us to the question of whether or not there’s direct evidence of the Trump administration working in coordination with Russia and its efforts at election interference.

If there was an exchange of information between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives at the Trump Tower meeting, would that have been illegal? The answer isn’t straightforward.

It’s illegal for political candidates to solicit foreigners for anything of value. This law is explicitly intended to keep foreign influence out of US elections. For the same reason, according to campaign finance laws, it’s illegal to accept a contribution or donation of money or “other thing of value” from a foreign entity.

While Team R prepared to issue indictments against the Russian agents responsible for election interference, Weissmann was moving forward with the case against Manafort. On October 27, 2017, he was indicted on 12 criminal charges, including money laundering, tax evasion, failure to register as a foreign lobbyist, and lying to federal officials.

Amazingly, while he was out on bail, awaiting trial, the crimes didn’t stop. He was also under a gag order not to talk about his case. Yet he repeatedly kept up correspondence with Fox News host Sean Hannity, feeding him talking points for his daily television show. But, eventually, Manafort did have his day in court – and was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison.

In the US, is it possible to indict a sitting president? This was a question that lingered throughout the investigation and continued to weigh on Weissmann’s mind long after the investigation had wrapped.

Currently, there are two decisions by the Office of Legal Counsel, part of the Department of Justice, that state that a sitting president cannot be indicted for a crime. It’s worth noting that one of these decisions came during the Nixon administration and the other during the Clinton administration.

The Special Counsel’s report was submitted on March 2, 2019. A series of conclusions and findings were also written up as a summary of the full report, which ran to over 400 pages.

The question that the press and the public were waiting to have answered, of course, was one that the report didn’t fully address: Did the president obstruct justice or cooperate with Russian election interference? Weissmann believes that the report’s findings make it clear that the investigation found plenty of evidence to suggest, at the very least, instances of obstruction. In no way does the report exonerate the president. But thanks to the attorney general, that wasn’t the message the public heard.