Andrew Weissmann

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Andrew Weissmann
Born c. 1958 (age 66–67)
Education Princeton University (BA)
Columbia University (JD)
Signature
Andrewweissmansignature.png

Andrew Weissmann (born c. 1958) is an Jewish-American[1] attorney. Since 2015 he has been the chief of the criminal fraud section of the U.S. Department of Justice. In June 2017 he was appointed to a management role on the 2017 special counsel team headed by Robert Mueller. To assume that position, Weissmann took a leave from his DOJ post.[2]

Education

Weissmann has a bachelor's degree from Princeton University. Following a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Geneva, he attended and graduated from Columbia Law School. He then clerked for Judge Eugene Nickerson in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.[3]

Career

From 1991 to 2002, Weissmann worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York. While there he tried more than 25 cases involving members of the Genovese, Colombo and Gambino crime families.[2] He led the prosecution team in the Vincent Gigante case, in which Gigante was convicted.[4]

From 2002 to 2005, Weissmann was deputy director and then director of the task force investigating the Enron scandal.[2] His work resulted in the prosecution of more than 30 people for crimes including perjury, fraud, and obstruction including three of Enron's top executives, Andrew Fastow, Kenneth Lay. and Jeffrey Skilling. In a follow-up case in U.S. District Court, Weissmann also was successful at arguing that auditing firm Arthur Andersen LLP had covered up for Enron. In that case, which resulted in the destruction of Andersen, he convinced the district judge to instruct the jury that they could convict the firm regardless of whether its employees knew they were violating the law.[4] That ruling was later unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court in Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, in which the court held that "the jury instructions failed to convey the requisite consciousness of wrongdoing."[4]

In 2005 Weissmann worked as special counsel under Mueller at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, then went into private practice at Jenner & Block in New York. In 2011 he returned to the FBI, serving as General Counsel under Mueller.[5] Since 2015 he has headed the criminal fraud section at DOJ. Weissmann has taught at NYU School of Law, Fordham Law School, and Brooklyn Law School.[3]

On June 19, 2017, Weissmann joined Special Counsel Mueller's team in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[6][7]. He was said to be "the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort." A news report in March 2019 said he would soon leave the Justice Department to become a faculty member at New York University and to work on public service projects.[8]

References

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External links

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  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Darren Samuelsohn. Everything we know about the Mueller probe so far. Politico, June 6, 2017.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Tom Schoenberg. Trump-Russia: senior US justice official Andrew Weissmann joining investigation. Sydney Morning Herald, June 1, 2017.
  6. ↑ Karen Freifeld. Mueller team lawyer brings witness-flipping expertise to Trump probes Reuters. June 19, 2017
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Carrie Johnson. Top Mueller Prosecutor Stepping Down. Morning Edition, NPR, March 14, 2019.
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