Where Law Ends ― Inside the Mueller Investigation

In the first and only inside account of the Mueller investigation, one of the Special Counsel’s most trusted prosecutors breaks his silence on the team’s history-making search for the truth, their painstaking deliberations and costly mistakes, and Trump’s unprecedented efforts to stifle their report.

“WHERE LAW ENDS TYRANNY BEGINS”—John Locke, inscribed on the wall of DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C.

In May 2017, Robert Mueller was tapped to lead an inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, coordination by foreign agents with the President of the United States and his campaign, and obstruction of justice by President Donald J. Trump. Mueller assembled a “dream team” of the nation’s top prosecutors, and for the next twenty-two months the investigation was the subject of endless anticipation and speculation—until April 2019, when the Special Counsel released a report of more than four hundred pages.

In Where Law Ends, legendary prosecutor Andrew Weissmann—a key player in the Special Counsel’s office and head of the Manafort investigation—finally pulls back the curtain to reveal exactly what went on inside the investigation, including the debates, deliberations, and mistakes of the team, as well as the external efforts by the President and Attorney General Barr to manipulate the investigation to their political ends.

Weissmann puts the reader in the room as Mueller’s team made their most consequential decisions, such as whether to subpoena the President, whether to conduct a full financial investigation, and whether to explicitly recommend obstruction charges. Weissmann also details, for the first time, the debilitating effects that President Trump had on the investigation, through his dangling of pardons and threats to shut down the inquiry and fire Mueller, which left the team racing against the clock with one hand tied behind their backs.

In Where Law Ends, Weissmann conjures the camaraderie and esprit de corps of the investigative units led by the enigmatic Robert Mueller, a distinguished public servant who is revealed here in a way we have never seen him before, as a manager, a colleague, and a very human presence. Weissmann is as honest about the teams’ mistakes as he is about their successes, and is committed to accurately documenting the historic investigation for future generations to assess and learn from. Ultimately, Where Law Ends is a story about a team of public servants, dedicated to the rule of law, tasked with investigating a president who did everything he could to stand in their way.