THREAD: What can we learn from today's revelation from former Mueller lieutenant Andrew Weissmann that Mueller's team failed to take investigative steps because they feared that Trump would fire Mueller?

1/ Today the Atlantic published an article by George Packer in which Packer explores the forthcoming book from Andrew Weissman, who was one of Mueller's top deputies.

The article features an interview of Weissmann, and some significant revelations. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/andrew-weissmann-mueller-book-where-law-ends/616395/

2/ Weissman's revelations are shocking. @AWeissmann_ said the threat of being fired by Trump caused the Mueller team to pull punches.

He claims the decision not to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. to testify about the Trump Tower meeting was due to fear of Trump's reaction.

3/ Weissmann also said that Mueller's team did not subpoena Ivanka Trump, who spoke to Trump Tower participants after the meeting, because they feared "risk enraging Trump, provoking him to shut down the Special Counsel's Office once and for all."

4/ Pulling punches in an investigation in response to threats by a subject of that investigation to obstruct justice is completely indefensible.

Obviously, Mueller and his team were in the very difficult position of investigating someone who could shut down their investigation.

5/ The Mueller report sets forth multiple attempts to fire Mueller and impede their investigation, and it's clear from the report that they concluded that those activities constituted obstruction of justice.

That makes their reaction to the obstruction highly disturbing.

6/ Mueller's most perplexing decision was not to subpoena Trump to testify, which any investigator ordinarily would have done.

(Trump ultimately agreed to provide answers to written questions, which were misleading and clearly written by his lawyers, as one would expect.)

7/ The report claims that the reason Mueller did not seek Trump's testimony is that it would have unduly delayed the investigation.

Weissman claims that the "real reason ... was "Mueller's aversion to having an explosive confrontation with the White House."

8/ If true, that is hard to understand or defend. Prosecutors routinely push subjects of their investigations to do things they don't want to.

Weissmann's account suggests Trump was treated differently from other citizens, and the special treatment was hidden from the public.

9/ Weissmann is also critical of how the report was written, calling one passage "mealymouthed" and concluding that "one reason the president and his enablers were able to spin the report was that we had left the playing field open for them to do so."

10/ That is a fair criticism, but I think part of the issue is that prosecutors typically don't write reports. They either obtain an indictment or remain silent.

Mueller was concerned about accuracy and fairness, not about writing something that couldn't be spun by others.

11/ It is hard for me to fault a prosecutor for trying too hard to be fair-minded and careful. We need more prosecutors like that.

Weissmann is particularly critical of Mueller's decision not to come to any conclusion regarding obstruction of justice.

12/ As he points out, it's obvious to anyone reading the report that they concluded that Trump had obstructed justice, and the lack of clarity was an issue.

I wouldn't have done what Mueller did, and I doubt most prosecutors would have either.

13/ That said, I admired Mueller's desire to treat Trump with the utmost fairness even after Trump smeared him and tried to fire him repeatedly.

His sense of fair play and restraint may have gone too far, but I will never criticize a prosecutor for being overly fair to anyone.

14/ I have faced prosecutors who abused their discretion and were unfair to defendants. Prosecutors who are careful and fair should be admired, not criticized.

The real issue with Mueller's investigation wasn't being overly careful or fair in a particular line of his report.

15/ Mueller faced an extraordinary challenge, given that the full power of the presidency and Trumpworld were arrayed against him.

Prosecutors typically do not face the unprecedented attempts to obstruct and smear that Mueller faced.

16/ They aren't trained as politicians and their job is to investigate, bring charges, and move on to the next case.

Many in the public wanted Mueller to be more than a prosecutor.

17/ Perhaps something more than a prosecutor would be needed to "take down Trump," but that was never Mueller's goal or his mandate.

Mueller's job was to investigate, prosecute, and report. He did so.

18/ The revelations from @AWeissmann_ that are significant and troubling to me are his statements suggesting that Mueller's team curtailed their work in response to obstruction.

That suggests that they didn't fully do their job.

19/ But arguments that Mueller was outmaneuvered by Trump and Barr, and should have done more against that, to me are wishful thinking that Mueller would be more than what he actually was.

He was a prosecutor and sought to remain above the fray and outside the political fight.

17/ That's typically what prosecutors do for a lot of good reasons, and when they don't, they usually run into trouble.

For that reason, if you do read the Atlantic piece, I would set aside the commentary of the author, George Packer.

18) He proclaims that Mueller's investigation was "the greatest potential check on Trump’s abuse of power" and that the "whole constitutional superstructure of checks and balances rested on Mueller and his team."

That is too much weight to put on a criminal investigation.

19) If you expected Mueller to take on our entire constitutional superstructure, you misunderstood the role of a prosecutor.

If Mueller caved to obstruction, as Weissmann claims, that's alarming. But his failure to "beat Trump" was not. That wasn't Mueller's job. /end