Attorney David Schoen is helping Michael Sessa attempt to gain a pardon after corrupt prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, allegedly lied to secure his indictment more than three decades ago.
Attorney David Schoen is trying to gain Michael Sessa a pardon after he was wrongly put in prison by corrupt prosecutor Andrew Weissmann three decades ago. Schoen was on with former mob boss Michael Franzese to discuss the corrupt Weissmann and Micheal Sessa’s wrongful imprisonment.
Michael Franzese sat down with renowned attorney David Schoen to discuss what they call “the single most corrupt case in DOJ history.” They dive deep into the wrongful conviction of Michael Sessa, a man who has spent 33 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
David Schoen exposes the unethical tactics of prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, including allegations of hiding exculpatory evidence (Brady material), suborning perjury, and ignoring witness statements that cleared Sessa. They also discuss the dark relationship between corrupt FBI agent Lin DeVecchio and mob hitman Greg Scarpa, and how the FBI instigated the Colombo War.
Attorney Schoen Reveals What Andrew Weissmann Did Behind Closed Doors
0:00 – Introduction
0:46 – Introducing Attorney David Schoen
2:10 – The plan to appeal to President Trump
3:15 – The FBI instigated the Colombo War (Scarpa & DeVecchio)
6:00 – David Schoen: “The most ethically bankrupt prosecutor I’ve ever met”
7:50 – The Michael Sessa Case: 33 years for a crime he didn’t commit
9:50 – The Hidden Evidence: The NYPD file that cleared Sessa
12:15 – The FBI Agent who committed murders (Lin DeVecchio)
14:20 – Weissmann’s attitude: “Indict the guy, I don’t care”
18:40 – Why judges cover for corrupt prosecutors
23:15 – How Michael Franzese was targeted by the same corrupt system
25:40 – The Appeal: Asking President Trump for Clemency
31:00 – Closing
After decades in prison, inmate Mike Sessa deserves a pardon.
Mike Sessa recently endured his 34th Thanksgiving in prison.
Mike Sessa (and Victor Orena) were imprisoned decades ago for murder with life sentences after being prosecuted by Andrew Weissmann in the early 1990s. This was the beginning of Weissmann’s career that later led to a storied history of corrupt cases and actions, including running the Russia Collusion coup against President Trump and much, much more.
Sara Carter shared an article that attorney David Schoen wrote in early 2021. This article is an excellent summary of Andrew Weissmann’s actions in the Michael Sessa case [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 [more than] 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 at 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.
Earlier this year, Michael Sessa penned a letter to Pardon Czar Alice Marie Johnson.
Sessa shared his story and asked for her gracious help in obtaining a pardon. Sessa mentioned that he listened to Johnson’s interview on Fox News with Lara Trump on May 17th. He was happy to see the person in charge of pardons was someone who had been through this system and also sentenced to the harshest sentence of life imprisonment without parole, and who spent 25 years in this system, which she and President Trump called “The Injustice System”.
Sessa noted that having her as the Pardon Czar gives many inmates hope in a system that has stripped people of hope, especially when they have had their parole taken away.
Sessa notes that he was a first-time offender who self-surrendered to his case 33 years ago, was denied bail, and sentenced to life, while every other defendant in his case, with many more crimes than him, are free and many for decades, some for 33 years.
Sessa notes that the witness in his case was charged with all of the identical charges as himself. The prosecutors Andrew Weissmann, et al and the FBI’s informant in Sessa’s case-Greg Scarpa committed over ’50’ murders while working for the FBI who protected him.
Sessa’s case is so outrageous that they are now filming a Movie about Scarpa titled “By Any Means”. Mark Wahlberg is playing the part of Scarpa. Scarpa’s FBI handler-Supervisory Agent Lindley Devecchio (who was the Government’s first witness and the head of the investigation in Sessa’s trial) was indicted for 4 murders and an additional 4 murders charged as bad acts involving his informant Scarpa.
Attorney David Schoen spoke to President Trump about Sessa’s pardon four years ago, but unfortunately, it never came. Attorney Schoen also represented President Trump in his 2nd impeachment trial and won it for him. David Schoen is also a regular on FOX News, Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Roger Stone’s Podcast, and many others.
Those who know Andrew Weissmann know his corruption and crimes over the years. Roger Stone shared in an interview in 2022 at The Gateway Pundit that: “There’s a Special Place in Hell for Andrew Weissmann”. President Trump, Roger Stone, General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort (who President Trump also pardoned), and Mike Sessa were all prosecuted by the same unethical prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann.
Sessa self-surrendered to this case when he was ’32’ years old, and he is now ’65’ and has spent ’33’ years in prison, which is equivalent to a ’37’ and a half year sentence with good time credits. Sessa shares that his daughter was ‘5’ months old when he went to prison, and she’s now ’33’ and a college graduate. His wife was only ’29’ years old when he self-surrendered. He has over 100 letters written in support of his release by prison staff and fellow prisoners alone. He also has an additional ’50’ letters written in support of him by Family and friends for a total of over “150′ letters.
All Sessa wants is a chance and for the Pardon Czar to bring his case to President Trump so he can set Sessa free after ‘a 3rd of a century’ behind bars.
Sessa notes there are also many other federal prisoners who have spent 20, 25, 30, and more years in prison, well deserving of a 2nd chance at freedom, at life, who will also be law-abiding citizens and an asset to society. President Trump can also save taxpayers $BILLIONS of dollars by letting many well-deserving federal prisoners out of prison after they’ve spent many years in prison, and they, in return, will become law-abiding taxpayers.
Andrew Weissmann is the most corrupt prosecutor in DOJ history. He is the one who should be behind bars.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Top Attorney David Schoen Is Attempting to Gain Mike Sessa a Pardon After Corrupt Andrew Weissmann Sent Sessa to Prison Decades Ago appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.