Former Asst. U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann says there are at least three reasons President Donald Trump did not try to deny the midterm election that swept Republicans out of power in a rush of voter wrath. And one of those reasons came from directly inside Trump’s administration.
“In Trump 1.0 there were internal people to the White House and the Department of Justice and the FBI and within the intelligence Community who were pushing back [against Trump’s incursions against democracy in 2021,” Weissmann told Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell in a Thursday night podcast.
Trump 2.0, he said, is more of a science experiment on what happens when you have only loyalty and incompetence as hiring criteria. But in 1.0, Weissmann said the military and other leaders made clear that they were not willing to do to keep Trump in power.
This year, however, some members of Trump’s legal team were pushing back less overtly, subtly signaling to judges and courts that Trump’s legal filings to intercept democracy had no foundation.
“There were signs of people internally not going along with things,” said Weissmann. “… The solicitor general, when they filed a brief in the Supreme Court on the list of 20,000 [California ballots] to set aside, he obviously didn’t have enough clout or power to tell the White House ‘we’re not doing that,’ or ‘no, or I’m leaving.’ But when you read the [Solicitor General John Sauer’s brief, I have never read a brief that signals as loudly as it could that this is a bull—— application.”
“It’s read the following way: our office has been told that there is this list and we have been told that it is believed to be accurate based on information that, at the time they looked at it, that may support a review,” said Weissmann, between smiles. “I mean, people were joking about it. I’m not sure you could put more caveats into that. That is not how you start a brief. [Sauer’s] basically saying, ‘this is bull——, and I’m forced to do this.”
The internal people not going along with Trump’s schemes to overthrow the 2026 midterms, however, did not include AG Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense attorney who Trump brought on to run the DOJ.
“Not Todd Blanche. He’s all in, in the grossest way,” Weissmann told Longwell, and then added that if there was any official in the second half of Trump’s term worthy of impeachment it was Blanche—who has been serving Trump ever since he failed to protect him from a hush-money conviction over illegal funds paid to a sex-industry worker.