FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Mueller’s Number-Two, Weissmann, Leaked Information on Manafort to AP Reporters
July 9, 2018 (EIRNS)—Documents released July 6 show that Justice Department attorney Andrew Weissmann, known as Robert Mueller’s “pit bull,” arranged a meeting with journalists from Associated Press (AP) to discuss an investigation into Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign manager, Chuck Ross reported in the Daily Caller July 8. This now-documented deputization of the press as government agents blows the lid off many so-called “national security reporters” who are nothing but willing scribes and actors in intelligence agency operations.
It is noteworthy that a similar process took place in the 1980s Federal prosecution of Lyndon LaRouche. First, based on a British demand for action, journalists were assembled under the tutelage of New York investment banker and CIA asset John Train for a series of salons aimed at destroying LaRouche’s reputation through a coordinated defamation campaign. Other longstanding government-connected opponents of LaRouche also attended the meetings, setting out story lines for reporters. Having set the terroristic and fear-laden climate, the FBI and Justice Department then moved in to urge ostracized LaRouche supporters to “compose” an altered version of events.
In a similar revelation, Marcy Wheeler, a national security reporter who has the Emptywheel blog, purportedly critical of widespread surveillance of American citizens, confessed to ratting out a source to the FBI who told her that Trump was attempting, post-inauguration, to set up a back channel to the Russians concerning Syria, and that Michael Flynn would be responsible. Wheeler’s confession was published on Emptywheel on July 3rd, stating that she had broken the cardinal rule of journalism, reporting a source to the FBI. Having become a witness for Robert Mueller, Wheeler is being widely praised by other complicit fake news journalists for “following her conscience.” There is much more to this story than meets the eye, and EIR will be digging.
The Weissmann-AP meeting occurred on April 11, 2017, one month before Mueller was appointed Special Counsel.
The meeting came to light via a letter sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein from House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes late in 2017. Nunes’s letter asserted that the DOJ was “researching records related to the details of an April 2017 meeting between DOJ attorney Andrew Weissmann (now the senior attorney for Special Counsel Robert Mueller) and the media,” and asked that the records be provided to the Intelligence Committee.
Manafort’s lawyers obtained the documents on June 29, 2018, and revealed them in a motion filed in Federal court in Virginia, in support of a hearing into what they charge are “possible leaks of secret grand jury information, false information, and potentially classified materials from the [April 11, 2017] meeting,” writes the Daily Caller. “The meeting raises serious concerns about whether a violation of grand jury secrecy occurred,” Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing wrote, in demanding a hearing. Mueller named Weissmann as general counsel to the FBI when Mueller was FBI Director.
The meeting between AP reporters and DOJ officials was first reported in January 2018. The government confirmed it for the first time in a pre-trial hearing in the Manafort case on June 29.
At that hearing, FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Pfeiffer said that the FBI, based on a tip from AP reporters, may have conducted a May 2017 raid of a storage locker Manafort was renting. He also said the purpose of the meeting with the AP reporters on April 11, 2017, was for the DOJ and FBI to obtain information, the Daily Caller reported.
The June 29 court filing includes two reports about the April 11, 2017, meeting, one written by FBI agent Pfeiffer and another written by Supervisory Special Agent Karen Greenaway, who wrote that “The meeting was arranged by Andrew Weissmann,” and that Weissmann provided guidance to the reporters for their investigation, suggesting that they ask Cypriot money-laundering authorities if they had provided the U.S. Treasury Department with all the documents regarding Manafort.
AP had previously and categorically denied to journalist Sara Carter, in January 2017, that AP would ever voluntarily serve as a source for a government agency.
