DougRoss

President Trump is growing impatient over the lack of progress bipartisan negotiators in Congress have been making in talks over funding a desperately needed wall on the nation’s porous multi-state border with Mexico – and this continuing failure makes another government shutdown increasingly likely this Feb. 15.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted 217 to 185 on Dec. 20 for a spending bill with $5.7 billion for the wall. The measure floundered in the Senate and the partial shutdown got underway Dec. 22. The Senate remains in Republican hands but the House is now controlled by Democrats.

Trump engaged in what his handlers characterized as a strategic temporary retreat when he signed a bill Jan. 25 to reopen the government for a three-week period after the longest federal shutdown on record, dropping his demand that Congress appropriate funding for the wall before restoring the government to full functionality until Feb. 15 after which the government could partially shut down again. Trump said he’ll use the time to continue to push lawmakers for money for the wall and is perfectly willing to shut the government down again if he doesn’t secure appropriations for construction of the project.

Trump told Democrats and obstructionist Republicans he’s not interested in playing political word games over the wall, sometimes calling the wall a border structure, other times calling it a barrier or using a different word, the Daily Mail reports. Trump has quipped that Democrats can call the wall “peaches” if they want, so long as lawmakers appropriate funding.

“The Wall is getting done one way or the other!” Trump tweeted. In another tweet he added, “Construction has started and will not stop until it is finished.”

According to the British newspaper:

The U.S. president continued to rage for more than an hour, telling Republicans on a bipartisan panel tasked with coming to a border security arrangement to stop 'wasting their time' on the negotiations with his political opponents. “I’ve got you covered. Wall is already being built, I don’t expect much help!” he proclaimed.

Trump took to Twitter to continue complaining about the negotiators’ failure to accomplish anything.

“Large sections of WALL have already been built with much more either under construction or ready to go. Renovation of existing WALLS is also a very big part of the plan to finally, after many decades, properly Secure Our Border. The Wall is getting done one way or the other!” he wrote.

Although more than a few Democrat lawmakers have said Congress should fund the wall, the Democrats in charge of talks continue to stubbornly refuse to offer any money for the construction project.

The new Democrat majority in the House isn’t even pretending to negotiate in good faith with Trump. They correctly view the wall as an existential threat to their party and despite their endless whining and mockery of the idea of the wall, they know its construction would slow the flow of illegal aliens into the country and impede the growth of the party’s electoral base.

“If you’re asking if there’s any money for a border wall there is none,” Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.).

“Within the limited funding available in the bill, we will be fighting for balanced investments across the [Homeland Security] Department’s mission areas. And we will be pushing for a strong, but smart, border security posture, one that does not rely on costly physical barriers,” she said.

Trump railed against the uncooperative lawmakers.

“Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee are wasting their time,” he said. “Democrats, despite all of the evidence, proof and Caravans coming, are not going to give money to build the DESPERATELY needed WALL. I’ve got you covered. Wall is already being built, I don’t expect much help!”

Republicans on Capitol Hill have generally been supportive of the president in the wall funding fight, without being enthusiastic about the prospect of him acting unilaterally to fund the project.

An exception is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who went on Twitter Thursday to urge Trump to move ahead. “Mr. President, use your powers as Commander in Chief to build wall/barriers – apparently your only option.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) continues to be politely skeptical at the prospect of the president using emergency powers to obtain wall funding but many of the NeverTrumpers of Conservatism Inc. inside the Beltway have been downright hostile.

One of the more outrageous reactions came from Capital Research Center research director Michael Watson who tweeted that Trump should be impeached for trying to build the wall. “Declaring an emergency to override Congress’s spending authority is an impeachable offense and should be treated as such[,]” he wrote on Twitter.

Watson and a chorus of now-unemployed Weekly Standard staffers are incensed that White House aides have reportedly prepared an executive declaration that gives the president the ability to redirect billions of dollars in military construction and flood-control funds.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) has threatened to file a lawsuit immediately if Trump invokes the National Emergencies Act to secure funding to build the wall.

Legal experts say the president can call upon the National Emergencies Act, a statute President Gerald Ford signed into law in 1976, to get construction of the wall underway.

President Trump has already invoked the National Emergencies Act three times in his tenure, according to ABC News. President Barack Obama invoked the statute no fewer than 10 times.

Left-wing constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley confirmed in a recent column Trump has the legal authority to act.

“Congress expressly gave presidents the authority to declare such emergencies and act unilaterally,” Turley wrote.

The National Emergencies Act gives presidents sweeping authority as well as allowance in federal regulations to declare an “immigration emergency” to deal with an “influx of aliens which either is of such magnitude or exhibits such other characteristics that effective administration of the immigration laws of the United States is beyond the existing capabilities” of immigration authorities “in the affected area or areas.” The basis for such an invocation generally includes the “likelihood of continued growth in the magnitude of the influx,” rising criminal activity, as well as high “demands on law enforcement agencies” and “other circumstances.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that in the current polarized environment using the National Emergencies Act may be the only way the wall gets built.

A top aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was reportedly quietly forced to resign in November 2018 over improper sexual relationships with junior staffers that made some of his colleagues uncomfortable.

Matt House announced in November 2018 he was leaving Schumer’s office, where he had served as communications director for the past six years. Prior to that, he worked for Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Speculation swirled about why House left his prestigious role, especially given that he did not transfer into another high-profile gig. 

But according to The Huffington Post, House was forced out because of inappropriate sexual relationships with Schumer staffers.

“Upon learning that he had inappropriate encounters within the office and that it was making some staff uncomfortable, he was asked to leave,” a spokesperson for Schumer told HuffPo.

House also acknowledged he behaved inappropriately, attributing his problems to excessive drinking.

“I deeply regret the mistakes I made on the number of occasions when I had too much to drink, and I apologize to anyone who was affected by my behavior,” he said.

“I have always respected all of my colleagues and I was horrified to learn that I made anyone feel uncomfortable. In the past three months, I’ve stopped drinking and I’ve committed to making myself a better colleague and person.”

SIDNEY POWELL: Great, thank you. It's an honor to be here.

LEVIN: My honor. Former Federal prosecutor. You were in fact --- this is quite remarkable. You worked at the Department of Justice for 10 years. You worked in three Federal districts under nine different United States attorneys. It's not that you changed, it's that they changed over the course of time when a new administration comes in or what have you. And these U.S. attorneys were appointed by Presidents of both parties.

POWELL: Exactly.

LEVIN: And you also have been counsel, lead counsel, in more than 500 Federal appeals, 350 of them as the Assistant United States Attorney and Appellate Section Chief in the Western and Northern districts of Texas. I just want our audience to know how significant that is, how impressive that is because there's a lot of brilliant Assistant United States Attorneys out there, and you were one of them.

POWELL: Thank you.

LEVIN: And I want to take a very, very close look at Robert Mueller's office. A lot of people focus on Robert Mueller and they should, but this fun galleon there, my word is the number two guy who Mueller relies on for everything, Andrew Weissmann.

So let's focus a little bit on Andrew Weissmann, so the American people know who he is, and knows who really is the - in many cases, the Wizard of Oz, tell us about Andrew Weissmann.

POWELL: Well, I've called Mr. Weissmann, the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct because Mueller had a role in handpicking him for Head of the Enron Task Force and appointing him to that position.

LEVIN: And what was Mueller at the time?

POWELL: Mueller was in the FBI at the time.

LEVIN: He was the Director of the FBI.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: So he picks Weissmann to handle the Enron case.

POWELL: Yes. Weissmann was the Deputy Director at the time when they first started under Leslie Caldwell, who was the Chief of the Enron Task Force when it was first created in the collapse of Enron.

So they set about and targeted Arthur Andersen to begin with the Venerable accounting firm.

LEVIN: So they're investigating Enron.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: And they target Arthur Andersen.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: For what?

POWELL: For destroying evidence is what they called it. But they did it by making up a crime - by combining two separate statutes to create a crime out of something that wasn't.

So they destroyed Arthur Andersen. They knew they were going to destroy the company. They see --

LEVIN: How did they destroy Arthur Andersen?

POWELL: By indicting it.

LEVIN: They indicted Arthur Andersen because they're the financial advisors to Enron.

POWELL: Exactly. They were the auditors and financial advisors to Enron.

LEVIN: And they manufacture a crime by combining two different statutes.

POWELL: Exactly.

LEVIN: And at that time, how many people worked for Arthur Andersen?

POWELL: 85,000 people worked for Arthur Andersen.

LEVIN: Eighty five thousand people and Weissmann was the lead investigator.

POWELL: He was the lead prosecutor on that case.

LEVIN: And you reported in part, he informed the director of the FBI, at the time Mueller.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: Okay, what did they do?

POWELL: They knew they were going to destroy the company when they indicted it because Andersen represented 2,500 publicly traded companies. No auditor representing publicly traded companies can function as an auditor when they've been indicted.

And they sealed the indictment for a week while they were...

LEVIN: They indict them. Seal the indictment for a week.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: That's absolute disaster for accountants, auditors, financial advisors.

POWELL: Yes. And they worked behind the scenes during that week to avoid upheaval in the markets, so that when they announced the indictment and unseal it publicly, the markets are not as disrupted as they would have been if they had just indicted them publicly, immediately.

LEVIN: What did they indict Arthur Andersen for?

POWELL: They indicted them under a witness tampering statute. And the way they did it, they took essentially took criminal intent out of the process. And in fact, when the Supreme Court later got the case, Justice Rehnquist wrote the decision for the majority - well, for the unanimous Supreme Court and said it was shocking how little criminal culpability the jury instructions had required and that Andersen had not committed a crime at the time.

LEVIN: So Andersen gets caught up in this Enron case. Weissmann must know that there wasn't mens rea or criminal culpability. He indicts the entity, which for a major international corporation is a disaster because then you get documents, subpoenaed and so forth. There would have to search your computers and your records here and all over the world and so on. And it creates a great tumult in a company.

POWELL: Completely.

LEVIN: And that, in and of itself, depending on the nature of the subpoenas and the indictment and so forth, can freeze a company.

POWELL: Yes, and obstruction of justice under two different statutes that combined, created this new offense because there wasn't one.

Andersen had not been subpoenaed for any documents at the time. Andersen was cleaning up its files and proceeding to get ready for the investigation. So they just made up a new offense by combining the two different statutes.

LEVIN: Now, do you recall the name of the Federal trial judge that was involved in the case?

POWELL: Melinda Harmon in Houston.

LEVIN: Melinda Harmon in Houston, and then I assume, they appealed it.

POWELL: Andersen did appeal it.

LEVIN: What happened on appeal?

POWELL: The Fifth Circuit affirmed it on appeal.

LEVIN: Affirmed it and then they appeal it to the United States Supreme Court, which takes the case which is relatively rare.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: And the Justices look at this, you mentioned Rehnquist, and they say, "Wait a minute. There's no criminal intent. There's no criminal culpability. This isn't even really a statute. The instructions were faulty." And what did the Supreme Court rule?

POWELL: They reversed it unanimously.

LEVIN: Unanimously. Every Justice said, no.

POWELL: Exactly.

LEVIN: What happened to Mr. Weissmann since he led the case?

POWELL: Oh, absolutely nothing. Mr. Weissmann went on to become Director of the Enron Task Force. In fact, he had already by that time, by the time Andersen was reversed, he had already turned his sights on the Merrill Lynch defendants in what was called the Enron or Nigerian barge case and indicted four Merrill Lynch executives on a multi-count indictment in which they also made up a crime.

LEVIN: I want to get to that in a minute. What happened to Andersen?

POWELL: Andersen was destroyed the minute it was indicted.

LEVIN: It collapsed.

POWELL: It collapsed. Not only was it under criminal indictment, so it lost all its clients. But I think 160 civil plaintiffs piled on in multiple lawsuits.

LEVIN: So it was crushed. All those people lost their job.

POWELL: Exactly.

LEVIN: Investors lost all their money.

POWELL: All the partners lost their money.

LEVIN: They lost everything on a case that was reversed nine to zero by the United States Supreme Court that Mr. Weissmann was in charge of.

POWELL: Yes. And Andersen had been known to be the hallmark, the benchmark for accounting standards. Andersen was the gold standard for accounting, a venerable accounting firm.

LEVIN: Merrill Lynch, you mentioned, was Weissmann involved in that?

POWELL: Oh, yes.

LEVIN: What happened to Merrill Lynch?

POWELL: Merrill lynch was indicted - well, not the company, but I think one of the reasons they indicted Andersen was to send a message to other companies that if they knocked on your door, if the Enron Task Force knocked on your door, you could be destroyed and given the death penalty just like Andersen was.

LEVIN: But even if you don't know anything or you didn't do anything.

POWELL: Exactly.

LEVIN: That's the power.

POWELL: That is the power.

LEVIN: That a handful of prosecutors have.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: Just - and you even see it today with the indictments. When Mueller hands down indictments, it's all one-sided, people need to understand the other side doesn't have any say in it. They haven't had a chance to respond to it. Nothing's happened, but a group of government lawyers have decided to charge somebody or some entity with crimes. That's the beginning of the process. It's not the end of the process. And I want to pursue this with you a little bit more later because the media treat it as - well that's it.

But I want to talk about these executives with Merrill Lynch. What happened to them?

POWELL: Well, essentially Merrill Lynch offered them up as sacrificial lambs and entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the government on behalf of Merrill Lynch, the company that was extremely onerous.

In fact, they agreed to have an overseer from the Enron Task Force installed in Merrill Lynch for a period of 18 months to oversee everything including the bills that the defense lawyers were submitting. They agreed that no Merrill Lynch employee could say anything that contradicted the government's view of the prosecution, which was absolutely astounding and I think illegal.

And then the Merrill Lynch executive --

LEVIN: So the government secretes itself within the company it is investigating.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: To oversee the bills that they're paying in their defense account.

POWELL: Yes, and everything else that's going on in the company.

LEVIN: So it's thoroughly unconstitutional. These four executives, they're indicted. What happens to them?

POWELL: Their lives are destroyed. They went through a 10-year period of unmitigated hell. There was the investigation and then they're indicted, and then they face trial. The trial was a circus, I detail it at length in my book.

LEVIN: This book?

LEVIN: "License to Lie."

POWELL: Yes. They were tried in Houston in the wake of the --

LEVIN: Enron.

POWELL: In the wake of the Enron collapse --

LEVIN: People were angry.

POWELL: People were furious. Andersen had just been convicted. So there was all the uproar about that. All of Houston was in turmoil because of the collapse.

LEVIN: So what happened to these four?

POWELL: They were all convicted. The lawyers for the defense were like deer in headlights most of the time. They were blindsided at every turn --

LEVIN: By the government.

POWELL: By the government. They had made repeated requests for what's called Brady material because the government holds all the cards and their criminal prosecution. The government is legally constitutionally and ethically required to produce any evidence that is favorable to the defense that is within the government's possession or within its reach.

Oh, no, they steadfastly denied that there was any such Brady material. When the defense kept making demand after demand after demand. The judge at the time, Judge Ewing Werlein who was assigned the Merrill Lynch case, finally made the government produce a list of people that they had admitted might have some Brady material.

And then upon further demand, he finally ordered the government to produce summaries of that material.

LEVIN: When we come back, I want to know ultimately, what happened to these four executives. Then I want to continue to examine Mr. Weissmann because it's very, very crucial. And beyond that, how this Special Counsel office is operating.

Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget most weeknights, you can watch me on Levin TV, Levin TV. Go to blazeTV.com/mark, I hope you'll sign up there; blazetv.com/mark or give us a call 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN-TV. We would love to have you at our Conservative Town Hall over there. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Sidney Powell, so four executives at Merrill Lynch are prosecuted by Weissmann and his team after he had finished with pretty much Anderson, that company is collapsing and he's going after Merrill Lynch. They've secreted themselves into the operations of Merrill Lynch. They even look at everything from what the defense counsel is charging, which is really quite exceptional, and four men or charged -executives. They're convicted.

POWELL: Yes. They were indicted for conspiring to defraud Enron of the honest services of Andrew Fastow.

LEVIN: Okay, what happened? I assume they appealed.

POWELL: They were all convicted. They did appeal. And on appeal, the Fifth Circuit reversed 12 out of the 14 counts of conviction. They reversed all the honest services counts against all the Merrill Lynch defendants and the related wire fraud count.

LEVIN: So let's be clear in plain English, so all the counts relating to their work with Enron and so forth were reversed.

POWELL: Yes, all the honest services fraud charges were reversed. The conspiracy and the wire fraud charges, yes, because they were not valid charges. The defendants' conduct was not criminal. But the real atrocity was that these men at the urging of Mr. Weissmann and his Enron Task Force cohorts were sent to prison upon their conviction.

LEVIN: So they didn't wait for the appeal. They immediately send them off to Federal Prison. What kind of Federal Prison?

POWELL: The youngest Merrill Lynch defendant was sent to a maximum security Federal transfer facility with the worst of the worst criminals in the country.

LEVIN: You know, when I was Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, I saw some of these facilities. I saw Marion, which is a final top security prison. Why would they send this gentleman to a maximum security prison where we have terrorists, mass, murders mobsters, gang bosses, the worst of the worst, in order to break them?

POWELL: Yes, they did the worst things they could possibly do to these men in the system.

LEVIN: And that's Weissmann? Weissmann had to ask the Federal Bureau of Prisons to put that man in that place. Because if he didn't ask him, he wouldn't be in that place.

POWELL: And that young man was completely acquitted on appeal --

LEVIN: He was completely acquitted on appeal. How long did you serve in this prison?

POWELL: Eight months away from his two young children and family in an absolute, unmitigated hell.

LEVIN: So you say 12 of the 14 were reversed. What were the other two counts?

POWELL: The other two counts were absolutely appalling. My client was convicted and still stands convicted on two counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for testifying about his personal understanding of a telephone call he was not even on after Mr. Weissmann in the grand jury told him to share his personal understanding of that phone call, whether it was accurate or not.

LEVIN: Well, this is interesting. Isn't that sort of the way they want to catch the President of the United States?

POWELL: Exactly.

LEVIN: And yet, how many years ago was this?

POWELL: This was 16 to 18 years ago.

LEVIN: And this connection between Mueller and Weissmann two decades.

POWELL: At least, two decades.

LEVIN: Does he treat him almost like a son? He seems to go - he seems to bring Weissmann with him wherever he goes, including as Director of the FBI.

POWELL: He did. He has been promoting and protecting Mr. Weissmann for at least two decades.

LEVIN: And he is Appointed Special Counsel and his immediate first choice is Andrew Weissmann to be his top lieutenant.

POWELL: That's right.

LEVIN: I want to get into the treatment of the President by Mueller, Weissmann and team, but first I want to talk about Manafort.

Last time I heard he was in solitary confinement in a Federal Prison.

POWELL: Yes, he is.

LEVIN: Same treatment as the Merrill Lynch gentleman. He was convicted by jury in Virginia on multiple accounts. Now they're back in D.C. trying to get more accounts piled on. There have been reports that Manafort is depressed and that he's pretty broken.

This is par for the course, isn't it? You know, you have your - typically, you have a prosecution, you have conviction and you move on to your next case.

You were involved in a lot of cases.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: You've been Assistant U.S. Attorney for nine different U.S. Attorneys. This is different, though. This is really like a blood sport for Mr. Weissmann, isn't it?

POWELL: Oh, it definitely is. Yes.

LEVIN: And so they're dragging him back in Washington, D.C. in front of an Obama judge, Mr. Chief Justice, and yes, it does make a difference -- in front of them Obama judge who's very receptive, apparently to the Special Counsel's arguments and has been repeatedly --

POWELL: Oh, yes. She's the one that remanded Mr. Manafort to custody immediately upon their requests, and is allowing them to pile on the additional charges.

LEVIN: And when you look at the case involving Andersen and Merrill Lynch, these four executives and now, Manafort. Like I said, it's almost as if it's not that they had more to offer. It's that there's almost an obsession, an odd desire to destroy these people, not just punish them, but to break them into a thousand pieces.

POWELL: That's exactly what it is. And Mr. Weissmann did the same thing to another person I describe in "License to Lie," and that was young Enron treasurer, Ben Gleason, who wanted to just plead guilty to a crime that he admitted he committed in one of Fastow's schemes and then reported to prison to serve his time.

Mr. Weissmann wanted him to cooperate and testify against other people. Well, Gleason just wanted to do his time and be done with it. So what happened when this young man 30-something years old, reported to prison, he found himself immediately put into solitary confinement which is a cell barely large enough to stand up in with a slit for light, your caged like an animal for 23 hours a day and he was completely broken.

They left him there for almost two weeks and then putting him in the general prison population. Solitary will drive a sane man insane within 24 hours.

LEVIN: I want to talk about this and I want to bring in the fact that this gentleman, Weissmann, so called gentleman is really the invisible hand that is pushing the effort against the President of the United States in my view. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LAUREN GREEN, CHIEF RELIGION CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Lauren green. Brazilian authority is raising the death toll from Friday's dam collapse to 58, with more than 300 people still missing. The dam built by a Brazilian mining company unleashed a massive mudslide that buried mining facilities and nearby homes. Rescuers continue searching into the night, but the hope of finding survivors grows dim. Officials say that most of the people still missing are presumed dead.

California Senator Kamala Harris has formally kicked off her run for President. The Democratic lawmaker held her first campaign event earlier today, a rally in her hometown of Oakland. She says she's running to be quote "A President by the people, of the people, for all the people." Harris is the third Democrat to officially announce her candidacy. I'm Lauren Green. Now back to "Life, Liberty & Levin."

LEVIN: Sidney Powell, the President of the United States, I think he was set up from Day 1 before he was President of the United States.

POWELL: Oh, I agree.

LEVIN: Even as a candidate, they were focused on him. I think the evidence is abundantly clear and I don't much care what the Mueller report has to say. There needs to be another report on what took place when President Trump was candidate Trump, when President Trump was President- elect Trump, and then shortly after he became President Trump.

We have the Hillary Clinton campaign earlier this week, there was information that five or six surrogates to the Clinton campaign we're pushing this dossier into the FBI and among others, Baker, the General Counsel who's now out and under criminal investigation, got a copy. Others also received copies of it because it turns out the Clinton campaign and the DNC through their straw man and all the rest - they funded this operation. They funded the opposition research and they pushed it into the FBI, into a friendly senior level of the FBI run by the Obama administration and the Loretta Lynch Justice Department.

Now, Mr. Weissmann, it turns out, based on this earlier reporting by John Solomon this week, was among several who were told by Bruce Ohr for America. He served on the staff of the Deputy Attorney General, a very senior position. I had the position once. The Deputy Attorney General was an Obama holdover at some point, she became the Attorney General, Sally Yates - extremely partisan and a friend of Andrew Weissmann's, as a matter of fact.

And Weissmann before he goes into the Special Counsel, one of the individuals who Bruce Ohr tells according to his testimony to Congress in closed session, this dossier, "Look, my wife works for Fusions GPS, which you know, secured the dossier and just be careful about it because it is involved in opposition research and there are political aspects to it."

So they develop this application that they filed with the FISA court. They put a tiny little footnote in there, which nobody read, including the Federal judge who sits there as a FISA court judge rather than explaining what this dossier is, because they want to ultimately investigate the man who becomes President of the United States, Donald Trump; not Carter Page, not Manafort. They want Trump.

And they get their FISA warrant, and they get it extended three times. Not once are these judges told about this - this really poisonous fruit, this dossier and the facts surrounding it. So I have two questions for you in the lead up here. Mr. Weissmann - how in the world can he be on the Special Counsel's staff, really the man behind the man when he knew from Day 1 about that dossier; and then number two, where these Federal judges?

You and I practice law in Federal court, from time to time. A Federal judge learns that false or misleading information was presented to him or her, and on that basis, they sign off on a warrant? I can tell you, the Federal judges I practice - and one in particular, Royce Lamberth, he would have dragged my butt back into court. He would have had an evidentiary hearing and he would have held me in contempt. Where are these judges?

So first of all, how does Weissmann get away with this? I guess, because Mueller wants him to. And secondly, where are these Federal judges now that they know the truth, it's all out in the media, why are they sitting silently?

POWELL: Well, Weissmann has been doing this for at least 20 years and Bob Mueller knows it. That's what he brought him on the task force to do or at least --

LEVIN: Do you think Bob Mueller wants this guy?

POWELL: Well, he has to.

LEVIN: He picked him.

POWELL: He handpicked him.

LEVIN: In fact, he's advanced this career over the years.

POWELL: He has totally advanced his career over the years and he's protected him. And I know that because Bill Hodes and I filed a grievance against Andrew Weissmann while he was Deputy Director General Counsel of the FBI under Mr. Mueller.

POWELL: Well, ironically enough, the Department of Justice was defending him against the grievance. We filed it with the New York Bar, and unbeknownst to us, the New York Bar punted it to the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility to decide it while the Department of Justice was defending Mr. Weissmann on it.

And all of a sudden we get a letter from OPR, of course, finding absolutely nothing wrong even though Mr. Weissmann and his team had yellow highlighted evidence that they knew before the trial was favorable to the Merrill Lynch defendants, completely favorable to them.

The exact language we needed to defend them before the trial that exonerated them completely.

LEVIN: So he skates on the edge ...

POWELL: And they did it.

LEVIN: He skates on the edge, and he just seems to get away with it.

POWELL: Oh, it wasn't even on the edge. The Fifth Circuit and our motion for a new trial appeal found that the prosecutors plainly suppressed evidence favorable to the defense. They just bailed out the government by holding it wasn't material.

LEVIN: See this Fifth Court - the Fifth Circuit Court ruling material or not, that shows really sketchy conduct, because of the Supreme Court reversal. You have this man who is told that the dossier really is tainted. He winds up in the Special Counsel's office.

You have these judges who don't plan to do a damn thing about any of it on the FISA court. Now you have them teeing up the President of the United States and they say, "We want to interview the President of the United States. That's no big deal. We just want to know his opinion about why he fired James Comey. We just want to know his opinion about Lieutenant General Mike Flynn." When me come back, I want you to explain to us why that's a problem. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: So Sidney Powell, prosecutors office, Special Counsel says, "Look, we just want to interview the President. We want to know his view on Mr. Comey. We want to know kind of really why he ..." what was his opinion of Mr. Comey? What was his opinion to the Russia investigation? What was his opinion on Mr. Flynn and the media's out there, you know, if he has nothing to hide, what's the problem?

Isn't the problem like you just told us that your own client faced and explain that?

POWELL: Oh, yes. Well, first of all, neither Mr. Mueller nor Andrew Weissmann are interested in the truth, whatsoever. They're only interested in whatever they can generate, to create a criminal offense against whoever they want to target, and they will do that by any means they can manufacture, any means they can manufacture.

LEVIN: So why these questions - why do they ring a bell to you?

POWELL: Because, for example, my clients still stands convicted --

LEVIN: Merrill Lynch executives.

POWELL: A Merrill Lynch executive - of perjury and obstruction of justice -- two separate offenses -- for expressing his personal understanding of a telephone call he did not even participate in after Mr. Weissmann instructed him in front of the grand jury to share that personal understanding with the grand jury, whether it was accurate or not.

Well, if it's not even - it doesn't even have to be accurate, how in the world can it be perjury? And how can your personal understanding of something be perjury? It makes no sense whatsoever. But he has two felony convictions based on that and we couldn't get it reversed.

LEVIN: Thanks to Mr. Weissmann.

POWELL: Thanks to Mr. Weissmann.

LEVIN: And you couldn't get a reverse and Mr. Weissmann knows that.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: And Mr. Weissmann takes this whole page from his playbook, it says, "Look at this. I got the President of the United States." We just want to ask the President of the United States, what is your personal opinion about the way that Comey and why you removed him? And they find some contradictory piece of information or something he may have said elsewhere, even though a President cannot be held for obstruction of justice and firing a subordinate, which I've stated from day one, which others have stated from Day 1, which others have stated from Day 1 which is abundantly clear, but they're not going to charge the President. They are going to write a report and they're going to be able to write a one-sided report.

And this is what I wanted to ask you. Prosecutors don't write reports. Prosecutor speak in the courtroom, or they keep their mouth shut.

LEVIN: So we have a Special Counsel who is going to write a report. Okay, the report is supposed to be a confidential report, just for the higher ups at the Department of Justice, but of course, Congress is going to demand it. The press is going to demand it, somebody will likely leak it. So here we're going to have a document by the likes of Mr. Weissmann, who will oversee it with his with his boss. Mr. Mueller.

Given your experience with Mr. Weissmann, can you expect this report to be a fair report that lays out, you know, the different responses of -- do you expect this report to be the sort of thing that Mr. Weissmann is known to do in the courtroom, at sentencing hearings? Kind of withholding certain kinds of information, underscoring certain kinds of information? What do you expect from this report?

POWELL: Mr. Weissmann couldn't write a report that would make - you're giving your mother a nice Christmas present sound like a Federal criminal offense.

LEVIN: So your own experience with this fellow and his record and he's going to be writing the report and isn't that why Pelosi and the other Democrats in the media say, "Let's wait for the report. Let's wait for the report," because they know who's going to be writing the report. And I suspect they know some of the things, frankly, that are going to be in the report. Wasn't Mr. Weissmann at the Hillary Clinton victory party?

POWELL: Yes, I've heard that's true.

LEVIN: I understand, she lost.

POWELL: Yes.

LEVIN: And that upset him very much. Didn't he send a communication to Sally Yates, who was the acting Attorney General at one point, an Obama leftist appointee who had been the Deputy Attorney General, and while Schumer and the Democrats were holding up sessions for confirmation until they could, you know, drag a recusal out of him.

She was the acting Attorney General who blocked the President of the United States because she was not going to allow the Justice Department to argue for his executive order in defense of it on the limited immigration status with certain countries - individuals from certain countries and he told her to keep it up. Good fight.

POWELL: Oh, yes. He was applauding her resistance to the President.

LEVIN: You've been doing this a long time. You're a prosecutor a long time; defense counsel a long time. The media treatment of this. I look at the media treatment of Ken Starr and the media treatment of Robert Mueller and they are mirror opposites of each other. Have the media gone completely in the tank, do you think?

POWELL: Oh, yes, I have no doubt about that. But another thing you need to know is that Andrew Weissmann is a master manipulator of the media. He did that throughout the Enron litigation also. In fact, he sat in the courtroom with his arm around Mary Flood, who was the lead reporter for the "Houston Chronicle" throughout the Enron litigation.

LEVIN: Didn't he, at some course - at some point during the course of the current investigation brief the "Associated Press," as I recall.

POWELL: Oh yes. That was early in I think before he was on Special Counsel's team in the Department of Justice when he was looking into the Manafort issues.

LEVIN: I'm going to pursue this with you in a moment. Don't forget, folks, almost every weeknight you can watch me on Levin TV, imagine that. Levin TV. Sign up. Give us a call at 844 LEVIN-TV, 844 LEVIN-TV or go to blazeTV.com/mark; blazetv.com/mark. We will be right back

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Leaking. There's been a lot of leaking. The head of the FBI Comey, tried to cover up he was leaking until he was under oath in front of Congress. Why else would he try and leak through his professor friend? McCabe, number two leaker. Baker, number three, the General Counsel there, leaker. The number two and number three under criminal investigation. Strzok, leaker; Page, supposedly.

Lots of leaking at the top levels of the FBI in the course of a criminal investigation. First, a counterintelligence investigation. Now, in terms of the Special Counsel's Office, I've speculated or surmise that they are leakers, and that's one of the reasons the media treats them so well. Of course they hate Trump and they want to see Trump hanging from a telephone pole.

But also, you know, these are their sources. So when this BuzzFeed article came out, they basically pointed to the Special Counsel's office. Where else would you get these documents, texts, e-mails from even if there's a pass through to anonymous law enforcement officials? They would have had to have come out of Mueller's office.

So I went on the radio and I said -- for an hour -- and we have eight and a half million listeners, and that's just on terrestrial radio. I don't know satellite and the internet. Okay, Justice Department, now you have your basis for a leak investigation. You need to conduct a leak investigation in to Mueller's office. Now what's a leak investigation involving - you have two FBI agents come in, offer lie detector tests. If those prosecutors turn them down, that's fine, they're still going to be interviewed.

This is my opinion, what do you think about that?

POWELL: Oh, I agree with you completely. That's Weissmann standard operating procedure. He crafts the narrative he wants in the media to convict people ahead of the charges being brought or ahead of their trial. He did that in the Enron and Merrill Lynch litigation also.

LEVIN: And it's interesting to me that in the mass media, the hard left mass media, there's no criticism whatsoever of this prosecutor's office. I've never seen anything like it. No prosecutor is treated this way. No prosecutor staff is treated this way.

Now, I know they despise Trump. They want him out; that they're mouthpiece is for the left and so forth. But their sources have been the head of the FBI, the number two at the FBI, the number three at the FBI, others at the FBI, people at DOJ, and I believe people in the Special Counsel's office and I think that's why they took this rare occasion. Actually, it's the second time, I believe they've done it to issue this statement and distance themselves from BuzzFeed.

This is the story I think that the media, even the conservative media are getting dead wrong. They're praising Mueller. Look at this. I mean, the guy is a good guy. I mean after all, he put out a statement. It's self- serving.

POWELL: It was totally self-serving. They were protecting themselves.

LEVIN: Now in terms of this report that they're writing, you don't doubt that Weissmann has a heavy hand in this, right? He is the number two under Mueller.

POWELL: I am sure Mr. Weissmann will edit every word of it.

LEVIN: And they'll deliver it to the Attorney General. Then the Attorney General will be pressured to deliver it to Congress, to deliver it to the media, but there could be grand jury information in there. There could be national security information that honestly has to be removed.

And so it seems to me the left whether they are journalists or members of Congress, are going to argue "Cover up, cover up cover up." In other words, they're not going to even let it go with the report. Do you think?

POWELL: I'm sure there's going to be huge uproar over all of it.

LEVIN: Let me ask you this from a constitutional perspective. A prosecutor issuing a report accusing people of stuff, is that constitutional?

POWELL: It's wholly inappropriate because the only charges the prosecutor is supposed to bring are in an indictment and the report should be as minimal as possible and only for the eyes of the Attorney General, otherwise you're - it's like what Comey did in his July 5th speech. It's inappropriate from every perspective. It should either be charges are being brought or charges are not being brought.

LEVIN: It completely undermines the Bill of Rights? Due process? Presumption of innocence? And unfortunately, a President who cannot be indicted while sitting in office according to the Department of Justice, how does he get his name back?

POWELL: Yes, it creates a massive smear campaign, but then that's what they want. That's what this was all about to begin with.

LEVIN: Okay, you know as a former Chief of Staff to an Attorney General in the Reagan administration, I can tell you that my Attorney General Ed Meese played it straight, fair and square. He told the U.S. Attorney's to do the same. He told the criminal division to do the same. Play it straight. He was a former prosecutor himself.

I see an increasingly political Department of Justice and FBI. What do you see?

POWELL: The same thing, I mean, that's one of the reasons I felt compelled to write and self-publish "License to Lie." I literally could not sleep because of what I had seen. It was so egregious, such appalling prosecutorial misconduct and it got even worse under the Obama administration.

I mean, when I saw the people I named in the book that were chosen for the Enron Task Force during the Bush administration, then promoted to the highest halls of government during the Obama administration and literally come to run the White House, the FBI and the Department of Justice. I could not be quiet about it. I had to try to alert the American public to what was going on.

LEVIN: Any Attorney General in recent times more political than Eric Holder?

POWELL: Absolutely not. I mean, we have just witnessed the unprecedented politicization and weaponization of every Federal agency under President Obama. And the worst ever of the Department of Justice and the FBI.

LEVIN: And let us not forget all these things we've talked about with the FBI and so forth happened under Obama -- Loretta Lynch under Obama -- all of these activities, the Russian interference in the election - Obama. It's been an enormous pleasure to have you.

POWELL: Thank you so much, Mark.

LEVIN: Thanks for all the work that you do. Ladies and gentlemen, join us next time on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

Stone is not a drug dealer, nor is he a terrorist. Stone is charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements to the special counsel. Significantly, the alleged false statements specified in the indictment were about conduct, which, if admitted, was not criminal.

I prosecuted drug dealers. I never sent more than a handful of agents to arrest them, and these were were gun toting, vicious dudes. Stone does not own a gun nor does he even have a license to do so.

I supervised the prosecution and, thus, the capture of foreign terrorists. The FBI never sent 29 agents to capture even the most dangerous.

Department of Justice protocol for non-violent defendants with no flight risk is to contact defense counsel and arrange a time to appear in federal court for arraignment. Stone has claimed for months that he was about to be indicted. Yet, he did not flee. He has stated that his passport is expired. The judge did not find Stone a flight risk, releasing him on his own signature.

Worse, someone with the FBI or Mueller’s team dropped a dime on CNN, which sent a reporter who falsely claimed he was only there because of “reporter’s instinct.” The presence of the press was intended to send a message: “If you cross Mueller, you will be publicly humiliated.”

On Thursday, Wray denounced the partial government shutdown by posting on the FBI website that “It takes a lot to get me angry, but I’m about as angry as I have been in a long, long time.” It is time for him to get angry about how Mueller’s team used the FBI. He can start by investigating who got CNN to the arrest scene.

Victoria Toensing served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Department from 1984-1988, where she established the department’s Terrorism Unit. She is founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm  diGenova & Toensing, LLP.

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