Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI attorney, said on Tuesday that CNN’s revealing interview with a former White House staffer about Donald Trump’s intentional mishandling of classified documents is “huge indictment of our judicial system.”
“My reaction to all of this is it’s a huge indictment of our judicial system,” Weissmann told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.
“We’re all listening to this. It’s riveting. That’s what a trial is supposed to be,” Weissmann continued. “Donald Trump should have his day in court to be able to cross examine all of this, but the public is entitled to not just hear from Mr. Butler but everyone.”
Weissmann criticized the Supreme Court of the United States for “putting a stay needlessly on the DC case.” The highest court in the land is waiting until April 25 to hear Trump’s argument that U.S. presidents are immune from all criminal liability in his effort to evade trial for charges related to his inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
He also blasted Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, whose pro-Trump rulings in the former president’s Espionage Act case has prompted a bipartisan effort for her to recuse herself.
“Don’t get me started,” Weissmann said about the judge, who was appointed by Trump himself in November 2020. “She clearly is not going to have this trial. And that is why you have [Butler] speaking [to the press]. In some says, I say, thank God he’s speaking.”
He pointed out that normally a prosecutor would not want a witness to be speaking about the case before the trial. “In this case, my reaction is, this is the only way the public is going to learn it. And that’s really not right. The public has a right to have a speedy trial to hear the evidence.”
Weissmann added that Butler “seems very credible,” and that the public is “entitled to the whole story.”
He added, “It really tells you about what the judicial system is doing and closing down accountability. And so this [the media is the] forum where we can have some account of what happened, but it’s not really enough. It’s not the way that we decide things in the United States: When there’s a dispute, we have trials.”
Watch Weissmann’s comments in the video above.
