Amid conversations about Donald Trump's weaponization of the Justice Department while he was in office, a former senior prosecutor on Robert Mueller's team, Andrew Weissmann, revealed that he believe he was targeted.
Last week, former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly told an allied ex-Trump staffer that the then-president wanted to use the IRS to target the two FBI agents, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, that were on Mueller's team.
They were ultimately removed and now are suing the government.
While he made clear that he doesn't compare his experience to the severity and seriousness of what former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page experienced, Weissmann described something he said he found suspicious at the time
"Let me actually ask you a two-part question because I know you shared with our producers that Trump's efforts to weaponize the federal government against anyone that was investigating Russia reached you," MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said to Weissmann Monday.
Weissmann explained that reading the recent reporting about Trump using the power of the FBI and Justice Department against his perceived foes made him remember his experience and the questions he had.
"There are sort of two ways in which there are improper uses of the Justice Department," he began. "There is the one that you talked about, which is this idea of siccing the IRS on political enemies, which is also a criminal offense, if can be proved. The other thing that is — that was in the notes that John Kelly had was this idea of pulling security clearances. This is something that got a lot of attention in the middle of 2018. John Brennan was the victim of that. There was discussion of many other people, including Lisa Page and Pete Strzok and many others."
He explained it struck close to home because it happened to him.
"While I was serving on Director Mueller's team, and it was in the middle of August, the exact time that the news was breaking, I was subjected to a really unusual re-up of my clearance," Weissmann continued. "The way clearances work is they last for five years. At the end of five years, usually, six or seven, when the FBI gets around to it, there's a re-up of your security clearance. Well, in the middle of the Mueller investigation, only two to three years into my clearance — and it's way before it was up — I was subjected to a re-examination by the FBI, which I remember at the time being incredibly suspicious."
When he saw the report about Kelly's notes and the way Trump wanted to target people, it "seemed pretty clear how to connect those dots in terms of why I was subjected to that," he said.
Republicans in Congress claim that it was President Joe Biden that has weaponized the government against his so-called foes. As more information becomes available, questions are being raised about Trump's congressional allies distracting from actual weaponization in the administration before.
See the full comments from Weissmann in the video below or at the link here.
Mueller prosecutor was forced into new clearance exam by Trump's FBI during Russia probe www.youtube.com
