Where Law Ends

Introduction

It was Sunday afternoon, March 24, 2019. I was passing through the Lincoln Tunnel in my old gray Subaru, heading toward the soulless thruways that stretch between New York City and Washington, D.C. On the passenger side floor was Innis, my English cocker spaniel, curled up and dozing. His breeder had promised me he was a great travel dog who would easily be lulled to sleep in a moving vehicle, a quality that had come in handy, given my peripatetic lifestyle over the years, ping-ponging between my home in New York and my job at the Department of Justice. The trips had grown increasingly rare, though, as I found myself working around the clock in Washington.

As numbing as this drive usually was, this particular trip was wistful. I had spent the past twenty-two months working as a prosecutor for Robert S. Mueller III, leading one of the three main teams in the Special Counsel s Office charged with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and coordination between the Russians and the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. Two days before, on Friday, March 22, we had finally delivered our report, all 448 pages of it, to the new attorney general, William Barr. We were feeling a note of finality to our collective mission. The Special Counsel s Office had already largely dissolved. We d said our goodbyes. I was driving back to Washington, one last time, to polish a couple of last memos to file and organize the documents in my office for the government archivists who would preserve our papers for posterity. At age sixty-one, after more than twenty years as a federal prosecutor, I would be returning to teach at NYU School of Law as a private citizen in my hometown.

After months of speculation, the press now had written confirmation from Barr himself that our report had been submitted and that he would soon be issuing a public statement about it. All weekend, the drumbeat in the media grew louder, as the press

Andrew Weissmann teaches criminal and national security law at New York University School of Law and is a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block. Previously, he served as a lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller s Special Counsel's Office and as chief of the Fraud Section in the Department of Justice. Weissmann served as the general counsel for the FBI under Director Mueller. He also directed the Enron Task Force, where he supervised prosecutions in connection with the company s collapse. As a federal prosecutor for fifteen years in the Eastern District of New York, Weissmann prosecuted members of the Colombo, Gambino, and Genovese crime families, and police officers for misconduct arising from the Abner Louima attack. He holds degrees from Columbia Law School and Princeton University.

Where Law Ends burns like an old-fashioned 150-watt bulb, delivering light and heat in equal measure. . . . Where Law Ends is a gift a clarifying piece of history, wrapped up in our era s boundless anger and suspicion. Devlin Barrett, The Washington Post
 
Unlike the other Trump books that get hyped as explosive, this one lays out its case so patiently that its conclusions arrive not with a bang but with a snap the click of an indictment falling into place. . . . Weissmann s book is a fascinating document a candid mea culpa, a riveting true-crime story, that s nonetheless presented in the measured prose of someone who remains a stalwart institutionalist. Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
 
A damning indictment of a lawless president. George Packer, The Atlantic

A lucid and engrossing insider's look at Special Counsel Robert Mueller s inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election . . . an essential record of what the Mueller investigation proved and why it failed to bring Trump down. Publishers Weekly