“The tools to get at the truth are there and should be used. If Mr. Barr does not support their use, we should all ask ourselves why not.” Andrew Weissmann, New York Times op-ed, as quoted by the Washington Examiner, July 14, 2020
On July 14, 2020, the Washington Examiner reported that Weissmann, in a New York Times op-ed published that week, urged the Justice Department to “vindicate the rule of law” by putting Roger Stone before a grand jury after President Trump commuted Stone’s 40-month sentence. The Examiner quotes him: commuting the sentence “does not have to be the end of the story.” To “get at the truth of why he lied” to congressional investigators about alleged WikiLeaks outreach, Stone could be served with a grand-jury subpoena — federal, state, or congressional. The Examiner also quotes: “The tools to get at the truth are there and should be used. If Mr. Barr does not support their use, we should all ask ourselves why not,” and that Stone’s third choice — “the one that does not carry with it the risk of criminal charges and jail — is simply to tell the truth.”
The same Examiner piece quoted former Trump lawyer John Dowd dismissing the idea and saying U.S. Attorney John Durham “ought to take a hard look at Mr. Weissmann’s conduct on the dream team.” That is Dowd’s demand. It is not a Durham charge.
Commentary Aaron Maté, writing for RealClearInvestigations on July 16, 2020, argued that Weissmann’s op-ed claimed Stone had been convicted of “lying to Congress about the coordination between the Trump 2016 campaign, Mr. Stone, WikiLeaks and Russia,” and that putting him before a grand jury would “get at the truth of why he lied.” Maté wrote that the Mueller report did not find such “coordination,” and that the word appears in Stone’s indictment only to describe the FBI investigation, not Stone’s conduct. Maté’s piece is analysis. It is not a court ruling that Weissmann committed a crime by writing the essay. This page does not invent extra quotes from the Times text beyond what the Examiner and Maté printed.