“How Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann’s offer to an oligarch could boomerang on DOJ” John Solomon, The Hill, July 22, 2019 — opinion column from defense memos
John Solomon, then a Hill opinion columnist, published “How Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann’s offer to an oligarch could boomerang on DOJ” on July 22, 2019. Solomon wrote that in early June 2017, shortly after Mueller’s appointment, Weissmann reached out to American lawyers for Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, and that a July 7, 2017, meeting with those lawyers and FBI agents followed. Solomon’s account rests on defense memos from Firtash’s team, not on a court finding that a formal deal was offered or accepted.
As Solomon told it, the memos describe a discussion in which dropping Firtash’s 2014 U.S. Chicago bribery case was “doubtless on the table,” and in which Weissmann shared theories about Manafort, Ukraine, and Russia. Solomon wrote that Firtash rejected the overture. Firtash has long denied the Chicago charges and fought extradition from Austria.
Allegation This is a defense-side account published in an opinion column. Later reporting (including a Washington Post account referenced by TPM) said the Justice Department denied that dropping the Firtash case was ever on the table. This site does not resolve that dispute. It records Solomon’s column, the existence of the Firtash extradition fight, and the Department’s reported denial.
Firtash is not a substitute for a Russia-conspiracy count. The lightly redacted Mueller Report, as later writers noted, does not treat Firtash as a charged Trump-campaign co-conspirator. Solomon’s piece is still part of the conservative-press record of how the special counsel’s office hunted for cooperators in 2017. It is labeled allegation because the “sweet deal” is what Firtash’s lawyers said happened, not what a judge found.