[NPRs Ari Shapiro talks with Andrew Weissmann, a former senior
prosecutor on the Robert Mueller probe, about whats next for the
special counsel on the Trump investigations. ]
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WHY A NEW SPECIAL COUNSEL’S TRUMP INVESTIGATIONS WON’T BE LIKE
THE MUELLER PROBE  
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Ari Shapiro
November 25, 2022
NPR
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_ NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Andrew Weissmann, a former senior
prosecutor on the Robert Mueller probe, about what's next for the
special counsel on the Trump investigations. _

Special Counsel Jack Smith is in charge of two federal criminal
probes of Donald Trump,

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

If you had too much on your plate last night, then you might have some
sense of how Jack Smith may feel when he shows up to work. He is the
new special counsel that the attorney general appointed just before
Thanksgiving. And not only is he overseeing one of the largest
investigations in U.S. history - into the January 6 insurrection -
he's also handling the case about Donald Trump keeping top-secret
documents at Mar-a-Lago. So how does he start to dig into this? Well,
Andrew Weissmann was a senior prosecutor in former special counsel
Robert Mueller's investigation. Good to have you here.

ANDREW WEISSMANN: Nice to be here on the day after Thanksgiving.

SHAPIRO: One big difference between Jack Smith's job and most other
special counsel investigations is that he's not starting from the
beginning, building a case from the ground up. The January 6 and
Mar-a-Lago investigations have been off and running for a while now.
So what does that mean for the job of this special counsel, who's
stepping in kind of in the middle of things?

WEISSMANN: Yeah, so he has a number of advantages when you think about
other special counsels. For one, he is not investigating a sitting
president. He's dealing with a former president. So that already is a
leg up because you don't have this adversarial relationship with the
White House, or even at times with the Department of Justice. The
person you're investigating doesn't have the ability to dangle
pardons, doesn't have the ability to simply fire you. Those were
things that we worried about in special counsel Mueller's
investigation.

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

WEISSMANN: And as you mentioned, the big advantage is they're two
separate investigations. And by all accounts, those are well underway.
So he's not sort of building the plane and flying it at the same time.

SHAPIRO: If Smith's job is not to set the priorities or build a case
from scratch, how would you describe exactly what his task is at this
point?

WEISSMANN: One of Jack's strengths - I've known him for many years -
is triage - figuring out what is important and what is extraneous and
keeping everyone focused on what needs to be done in order to make the
ultimate decision about whether a case can be brought and, maybe more
important, whether it should be brought.

SHAPIRO: You know, another aspect of being a high-profile investigator
prosecutor, handling a case involving Donald Trump, is that, in this
era of American politics, that sets up somebody to be harassed,
possibly doxxed, maybe face death threats. Do you think Jack Smith is
prepared for what that might mean?

WEISSMANN: Well, having been in some high-profile matters, I don't
think that there's anything that prepares you. I had thought, when I
worked on the Enron Task Force, that that would prepare me for working
for special counsel Mueller. And it did in certain ways, and it didn't
in others because of the intensity and the vitriol that was part of
that. And I think that what Jack will face and his team will make what
we face in special counsel, assuming they decide to go forward in one
or both cases, you know, look like child's play.

And, you know, Jack is a career prosecutor. He was the head of the
Public Integrity Section at Washington that brings political cases
against Democrats and Republicans, so I think those are all things
that will serve him very well on the vitriol that is going to be
coming his way and has already started.

SHAPIRO: Well, given what you know of Jack Smith, what kind of a
special counsel do you expect him to be?

WEISSMANN: I think he's going to be very fast and very tenacious. I
expect that he is going to live up to what Robert Mueller used to say
when he thought that you were wringing your hands needlessly. He used
to say, stop playing with your food. That's something that will never
need to be said with respect to Jack Smith.

SHAPIRO: All right. Well, to keep this seasonal, I'm sure at the
Thanksgiving table last night, at least one person asked you, so is
Donald Trump going to be indicted? So now I'm asking you on NPR, what
do you think?

WEISSMANN: (Laughter).

SHAPIRO: Is Donald Trump going to be indicted?

WEISSMANN: I mean, you know, the prediction game is always fraught
with peril. You know, there are two federal investigations, and
there's at least one, if not two, state investigations. So to answer
the question on the federal level, I think - at least on the documents
case involving Mar-a-Lago, I think that the answer is yes. And I think
the timing of that remains to be seen. But I think - given that the
clock is really ticking and given who Jack Smith is, I think that's
going to be sooner rather than later.

SHAPIRO: That's Andrew Weissmann, professor of practice at NYU School
of Law and former senior prosecutor in the Robert Mueller probe into
Russian interference into American elections. Thank you very much.

WEISSMANN: You're welcome.

* Donald Trump
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* Jack Smith
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* Andrew Weissman
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* Mar-a-Largo
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