The Justice Department says Weissmann oversaw Enron Task Force investigations and prosecutions of more than 30 individuals, including Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay, and Andrew Fastow. That is documented in the 2015 Fraud Section announcement and the 2004–2005 Enron releases.
Allegation Defense lawyers, and later conservative commentators, said the Task Force used the threat of indictment to keep witnesses off the stand. The Los Angeles Times (Feb. 16, 2018) reported that Weissmann named 114 people as “unindicted co-conspirators,” and that several defense lawyers complained the threat blocked testimony that could have helped their clients. That is reporting of a complaint, not a court finding of a crime.
The Federalist published two pieces that matter here. On Nov. 8, 2018, Margot Cleveland asked whether Mueller’s lead prosecutor had a history of ethics problems and walked through the Skilling/Lay/Causey motion to dismiss for alleged witness threats. On March 5, 2019, Cleveland wrote that newly unsealed records “expose efforts by Weissmann, and the Enron Task Force he led, to intimidate witnesses and to interfere in the attorney-client relationship of a cooperating witness.” She described an email Weissmann sent about Ken Rice’s counsel, and affidavits the trial court declined to treat as enough to prove misconduct because attorneys would speak only off the record or because the email, a lawyer later said, did not change Rice’s cooperation decision.
Finding Cleveland’s own account of the district court is the limit: the judge denied the motion to dismiss. The court focused on whether any alleged threat actually silenced a witness. It concluded the defendants had not established that the government substantially interfered with counsel’s ability to interview witnesses. An appellate court, she wrote, later suggested Weissmann would have done well to bring the Cogdell issue to the court — still not a reversal for that reason.
Sidney Powell’s Fox appearances call Weissmann a “poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct.” Sidney Powell — allegation and commentary, not a criminal judgment
Sidney Powell’s book Licensed to Lie and her Fox appearances call Weissmann a “poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct.” That is Powell’s allegation and commentary. It is not a criminal judgment against him. No post on this site treats Powell’s label as a finding.
Cleveland followed the unsealing fight. On Jan. 14, 2019, she wrote that key Enron filings on the alleged misconduct remained redacted or sealed. RealClearInvestigations’ May 30, 2019, “Scorched Earth” piece pointed readers to those Federalist Enron-misconduct allegations when it said Weissmann assembled the Mueller team. The Washington Times (Oct. 22, 2017) published a long Enron-task-force retrospective tied to the Manafort raid. American Thinker (February 2018) recycled Powell’s “poster boy” line plus an EDNY withholding-evidence reprimand claim; that is commentary, not a new court finding on this page.