This article originally appeared on JoeHoft.com and was republished with permission.
DOJ monster Andrew Weissmann committed his worst prosecutorial crimes 33 years ago and as a result Mike Sessa sits in prison to this day.
In January of 2021, many individuals were attempting to gain Mike Sessa and Victor Orena pardons after decades in prison.
They were victims of Andrew Weissmann’s prosecutorial abuse in the early 1990s. Attorney David Schoen had discussions with President Trump as well as others. Unfortunately, White House attorneys sabotaged any pardon, and Sessa sits in prison to this day.
Sara Carter shared an article that was written by attorney David Schoen in early 2021. This article is an excellent summary of Andrew Weissmann’s actions in the Michael Sessa case which took place in the early 1990’s [emphasis added below].
An examination of Weissmann’s work as a prosecutor indicates quite emphatically that there is simply no limit to the kind or degree of prosecutorial misconduct in which he has been willing to engage.
The examples of Weissmann’s misconduct and the lives he has ruined or cost as a result could fill a book. Indeed, a great deal has been written about his misconduct in the Enron and Arthur Anderson cases that ruined so many lives and his actions there truly were reprehensible.
But a consideration of two cases he prosecuted almost thirty years ago, as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York stand alone in demonstrating his prosecutorial misconduct and government corruption under his watch that is unparalleled.
In the early 1990s Weissmann, John Gleeson, and others formed a team in the federal prosecutors’ office in Brooklyn, NY that prosecuted alleged organized crime figures.
This group’s record, as reported by other prosecutors and informants who worked with them, indicates that they apparently decided for themselves that the ends justified any means they decided to use in their work, no matter the ethical transgressions they would commit along the way.
Weissmann was not satisfied in simply prosecuting defendants against whom there actually was evidence of a crime; nor could he play by the rules. That has been the hallmark of his entire career.
His prosecution of two men in particular during the early 1990s demonstrates the point in ways that one would have thought unimaginable, if they were not fully documented and undeniable.
These two men, Michael Sessa and Victor Orena, have been in prison for thirty years, serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, after being convicted through the most outrageous examples of Weissmann’s misconduct on record.
I cannot possibly cover in the space allotted here all of the examples of the outrageous prosecutorial misconduct in which Weissmann and his colleagues engaged in these cases; but consider just these examples just from Michael Sessa’s case.
All of the facts below are unequivocally established by documents I obtained in investigating these cases and from interviews I have conducted with many witnesses, including top informants who worked with Weissmann on the cases.
Weissmann and his colleagues claimed that there was an internal feud within the so-called Colombo organized crime family in New York. It is now clear that this “war” was a battle initiated by perhaps the most corrupt FBI agent in history, in league with government informants. The agent chose sides in the family and pitted one faction against another.
The agent worked in tandem with a brutal mafia killer, Gregory Scarpa, who admitted to over 50 murders and actually committed many more.
The agent effectively gave Scarpa a license to kill and, according to Scarpa’s son, who I have interviewed extensively, the agent participated in crimes with Scarpa (and his son), including several murders, and was paid for his help in providing information to Scarpa about his next victims.
Ultimately the agent was charged with several murders and with helping on others. All of this took place while the agent was Weissmann’s case agent.
In fact, we now know that in 1992, when Scarpa was arrested on a gun charge in the middle of his killing spree, the corrupt agent went to Weissmann and his colleagues to get Scarpa out of the charges and they intervened, continuing his license to kill.
And killing is exactly what Scarpa did. He did not confine his killing to fellow mafiosos. Rather, through the license Scarpa effectively was given, completely innocent civilians were killed, including a 17 year old boy and a doctor.
When Weissmann ultimately was confronted with indisputable evidence of the corrupt relationship between the agent and Scarpa, according to a former federal prosecutor involved with the cases, Weissmann instructed her that the government had no obligation to disclose this corruption to the defendants in any of the cases they were working, including cases in which Scarpa had been the source of information against the defendant and in which the corrupt agent testified under oath.
That is exactly the scenario that unfolded in Michael Sessa’s case.
Weissmann alleged that Sessa killed a man named Collucio and had him arrested. Sessa, knowing he had nothing to do with this, self-surrendered to fight the charge, without knowing the kind of government misconduct he was about to face.
In the proceedings leading up to Michael Sessa’s trial, Weissmann had Sessa’s counsel of choice disqualified and then rushed Sessa to trial with new lawyers.
Sessa’s lawyers asked for the identity of the government’s primary source of information against him, identified by the government only as a Confidential Source.
Weissmann refused to disclose the identity and assured the judge it was not necessary for the defense to know. During the investigation after Sessa was tried and convicted, we learned that that source was none other than Gregory Scarpa.
Sessa’s lawyers in discovery asked that the NYPD investigative file be produced.
Weissmann and his partner assured the judge that they knew their obligations to disclose evidence favorable to the defendant or that would impeach any government witness and they told the judge that they had examined the NYPD file and there was no such information in it.
This was an outrageous lie of the first order. We obtained a copy through a source during the post-conviction investigation. In truth it provides an abundance of exculpatory evidence that was critically important.
For example, the NYPD investigation identified 10-12 suspects in the Collucio murder, none of whom was Michael Sessa, and one of whom was none other than Greg Scarpa. It was filled with other evidence consistent with Sessa’s innocence…
…Sessa’s defense team had reason to believe that one of Weissmann’s primary witnesses against Sessa had been arrested for heinous crimes, including kidnapping, rape, sodomy, and more – crimes that would have undercut his credibility and that the defense was entitled to know about. Weissmann denied it all.
In our investigation we learned that the suspicions were well founded and Weissmann had blatantly lied. This same witness testified that he had received no money from the government in connection with his testimony, save for food and lodging.
In 2012, the corrupt agent admitted that the witness had in fact been paid $120,000 in connection with his work for the government as Weissmann well knew and failed to disclose, listening silently instead as the witness lied…
Carter’s remarks were published in this article.
Above is a picture of Gregory Scarpa mentioned; this man is responsible for at least 60 murders and was the star witness for Weissmann in the Michael Sessa case. Weissmann kept his identity hidden during the case.
Attorney David Schoen shared the following:
…I’ll tell you this, in all of this universe of misconduct that happened in this case, only one lawyer for the government was ever singled out that I am aware of , ever singled out by name by a judge.
And that’s federal judge, and Chief Judge at the time, Sifken wrote an order in the case characterizing Weissmann’s since of ethics in the case as “myopic” and something that needed to be addressed.
Judge Sifton succumbed to requests to remove Weissmann’s name from the opinion per a request from the EDNY but here is the document before it was changed showing Weissmann’s name:
According to a piece by Schoen on Sara Carter’s website:
Government informants have reported to us repeatedly that Weissmann and his colleagues lied to the court regularly and that the judges seemed intimidated. One of Weissmann’s primary witnesses was caught on tape saying that he was told what he was to testify to over and over again.
When I began investigating these cases, I met with Vic Orena’s lawyer, one of New York’s most respected criminal defense lawyers for decades.
He was outraged by what he had seen from Weissmann.
He told me that he refers to Weissmann as “the pathological liar” after the SNL character and he chuckled. I asked him how he could laugh about it. He said that he has found Weissmann to be so evil and his behavior so outrageous that they never know what dirty trick he will use next and then deny and so all he could do was shake his head and laugh at how absurd it was that he kept getting away with it.
Finally, in 1997, it seemed like Weissmann would be stopped. The Chief federal judge in Brooklyn wrote an opinion addressing the corrupt relationship between the agent and Scarpa that Weissmann had concealed, that by then finally had come to light.
In his opinion the judge singled out and excoriated Weissmann by name for his “myopic” view of his ethical obligations and his “reprehensible” conduct in withholding this critical evidence from defendants. [Noted by Schoen above.]
However, Weissmann’s boss wrote to the judge asking him to remove Weissmann’s name, for fear it would impact his career. Shockingly, the judge complied and issued a new opinion without Weissmann’s name.
I have both opinions and the letter. This clearly set Weissmann on the path to believing correctly that he would be able to make a career out of engaging in prosecutorial misconduct and obtaining wrongful convictions with impunity.
This was the beginning of Andrew Weissmann’s criminal history as a morally corrupt DOJ attorney. His crimes include the treasonous act of trying to remove President Trump from office.
Weissmann must face justice for his crimes.
The post PARDON MIKE SESSA: In Prison for 33 Years Due to Corrupt Andrew Weissmann’s Prosecutorial Crimes Decades Ago appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.