Last week began with Judicial Watch’s obtaining more irrefutable evidence that Robert Mueller’s out-of-control investigation is little more than a politically motivated witch hunt.
The evidence was in two productions (335 pages and 44 pages) of Justice Department (DOJ) documents showing unbridled support by top DOJ officials for former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s refusal to enforce President Trump’s Middle East travel ban executive order.
In one email, Andrew Weissmann – one of Robert Mueller’s top prosecutors and formerly the Obama-era chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud Section – applauds Yates, writing, “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.”
We obtained the documents through a May 2017 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit we filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to a February FOIA request seeking Yates’s emails from her government account for the time she served as Acting Attorney General for President Trump (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-00832)).
The emails, several sent from official Justice Department email addresses, show strong support for Yates, who was fired for disobeying a direct order from the president:
- Thomas Delahanty, then the United States Attorney for Maine, wrote, “You are my hero.”
- Liz Aloi, a career service employee and chief of the Justice Department’s Special Financial Investigations Unit, said Yates was “inspirational and heroic.”
- Emily Gray Rice, then the U.S. Attorney for New Hampshire and an Obama appointee, said, “AAG Yates, thank you, as always, for making us proud. It is truly an honor to work for you.”
- Obama appointee Barbara McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told Yates, “Thank you for your courage and leadership. This is wonderful news.”
- DOJ Civil Division Appellate Attorney Jeffrey Clair wrote, “Thank you AG Yates. I’ve been in civil/appellate for 30 years and have never seen an administration with such contempt for democratic values and the rule of law. The President’s order is an unconstitutional embarrassment and I applaud you for taking a principled stand against defending it.”
This is an astonishing and disturbing find. Andrew Weisman is a key prosecutor on Robert Mueller’s team. Yet, he openly praised Obama DOJ holdover Sally Yates after she lawlessly thwarted President Trump. How much more evidence do we need that the Mueller operation has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans?
You will recall that Yates was appointed by President Obama as U.S. Attorney in northern Georgia and was later confirmed as deputy attorney general. On January 20, 2017, she became acting attorney general for President Trump.
And on January 30, she ordered the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s January 27 executive order seeking a travel ban from seven Middle Eastern countries. That same day, President Trump fired her for refusing to defend the action, but not before Weissmann and other high-ranking DOJ officials could heartily congratulate her for defying the direct orders of the president he is now investigating.
In a late October article describing Weissmann as Robert Mueller’s “Pit Bull,” the New York Times wrote:
He is a top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators — with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one’s perspective.
Weissman, it should be noted, also oversaw the pre-dawn home raid of former Trump aide Paul Manafort in what one former federal prosecutor described as “textbook Weissmann terrorism.”
Yates granted herself the authority, which she does not have under the law, to overrule her boss, the president. That Weissmann and so many others would fawn over her open defiance of an executive order exposes their utter contempt for the Constitution and their blatant bias against Trump.
There is ample evidence to suggest that President Trump is well aware of our ongoing legal efforts to ferret out the truth about the Mueller investigation. Trump pinned this tweet about JW’s actions in the early morning hours after my Fox & Friends interview on December 3, 2017.