Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation

Written by Andrew Weissmann

Narrated by Andrew Weissmann and George Newbern

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the first and only inside account of the Mueller investigation, one of the special counsel’s most trusted prosecutors breaks his silence on the team’s history-making search for the truth, their painstaking deliberations and costly mistakes, and Trump’s unprecedented efforts to stifle their report.

“Weissmann delivers the kind of forceful, ringing indictment that Mueller’s report did not.”—The New York Times

In May 2017, Robert Mueller was tapped to lead an inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, coordination by foreign agents with Donald Trump’s campaign, and obstruction of justice by the president. Mueller assembled a “dream team” of top prosecutors, and for the next twenty-two months, the investigation was a black box and the subject of endless anticipation and speculation—until April 2019, when the special counsel’s report was released.

In Where Law Ends, legendary prosecutor Andrew Weissmann—a key player in the Special Counsel’s Office—finally pulls back the curtain to reveal exactly what went on inside the investigation, including the heated debates, painful deliberations, and mistakes of the team—not to mention the external efforts by the president and Attorney General William Barr to manipulate the investigation to their political ends. 

Weissmann puts the reader in the room as Mueller’s team made their most consequential decisions, such as whether to subpoena the president, whether to conduct a full financial investigation of Trump, and whether to explicitly recommend obstruction charges against him. Weissmann also details for the first time the debilitating effects that President Trump himself had on the investigation, through his dangling of pardons and his constant threats to shut down the inquiry and fire Mueller, which left the team racing against the clock and essentially fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.  

In Where Law Ends, Weissmann conjures the camaraderie and esprit de corps of the investigative units led by the enigmatic Mueller, a distinguished public servant who is revealed here, in a way we have never seen him before, as a manager, a colleague, and a very human presence. Weissmann is as candid about the team’s mistakes as he is about its successes, and is committed to accurately documenting the historic investigation for future generations to assess and learn from. Ultimately, Where Law Ends is a story about a team of public servants, dedicated to the rule of law, tasked with investigating a president who did everything he could to stand in their way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9780593398647

Reviews for Where Law Ends

[mrdickie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The author, Andrew Weissmann, headed one of the teams of lawyers that took part in the Mueller Investigation.

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Andrew Weissmann is a prosecutor whose scalps include several mob bosses and Enron executives. In addition, he is a frequent contributor to MSNBC, particularly Nicole Wallace’s show. He was also a leading attorney on Robert Mueller’s team that investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump’s efforts to obstruct that same investigation.

Weissmann headed one of three subgroups of Mueller’s team—the group that went after Paul Manafort. Weissmann’s group was successful in convicting Manafort of numerous crimes, but was unsuccessful in getting him to “rat” on his boss [Trump] to provide information on Trump’s ties to Russia or any shady financial transactions. The other two groups of Mueller’s team were Team R (which explored the Russian connection) and Team 600 (which examined Trump’s obstruction of justice).

Weissmann asserts that the Mueller team failed in several respects to investigate the full extent of the violations of law perpetrated by the Trump campaign and subsequent administration. They did so because they feared that Trump would simply fire them, as was his statuary right to do. And so, they failed to pursue any of Trump’s financial dealings, and they were unable to get him to testify under oath.

Nevertheless, they were able to prove extensive Russian efforts to influence the election and obtained numerous indictments against Russian nationals involved in those efforts. However, despite evidence of numerous contacts between Russians and people involved in the Trump campaign, they concluded that they did not have sufficient evidence to bring a case of criminal conspiracy against the Trump campaign.

On the other hand, they produced overwhelming evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice in his efforts to impede the investigation. Nevertheless, they chose not to attempt to indict him because of a memorandum of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department that had concluded that a sitting president could not be indicted. In fact, they did not even clearly state that they had sufficient evidence to bring such an action. Instead, they produced a mealy-mouthed statement that it would not be fair to Trump to say that they had such evidence because he would not have been able to defend himself in court unless they actually indicted him!

Weissmann is highly critical of Mueller’s decision to refrain from recommending either indictment or impeachment. Nonetheless, he presents his boss’s (Mueller’s) argument fairly. Weissmann argues that the statutory scheme that established the “special counsel” (Mueller) was defective. Mueller’s authority was limited to informing and recommending action to the Attorney General, not to bring action on his own, unlike the power of the “independent counsel” that Kenneth Starr had in investigating Bill Clinton. This lack of authority allowed Barr to take Mueller’s report under advisement and grossly misrepresent its findings to the American public. Barr kept the actual report secret for about a month until political pressure finally forced him to reveal it. But by the time the report became public, Barr and Trump had already accustomed at least the Republican base to the idea that the report had exonerated Trump, despite specific findings to the contrary.

Weissmann concludes the book with a point by point refutation of Barr’s characterization of the report. He then makes some recommendations to improve the special counsel statute to prevent a future mischaracterization of its findings by a presidential toady like Barr. But that is a difficult task. Ken Starr showed that an unelected, very powerful independent counsel could disrupt a presidency in ways that are probably not good for the country. And yet, Donald Trump has shown that a truly corrupt person in the office of the president is exceedingly difficult to control.

(JAB)