From WNYC, I'm Brian Lair. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, May 20th.

NYU Law Professor Andrew Weissman is back with us with a new book and with a new and kind of eye-popping

legal issue breaking in the news. Maybe you've heard about this. President Trump and his Justice

Department just established a $1.8 billion fund at the taxpayer's expense. He calls it an anti-weaponization

fund. The Wall Street Journal reports it this way. The president's allies and

supporters stand to receive payouts based on claims they were mistreated by the government, unquote,

from the Wall Street Journal. This came from the highly unusual spectacle of President Trump

suing the federal government that he runs and then basically, you might call it striking a deal

with himself. What's more, the deal includes an agreement that's now just breaking as a secondary

story that the Trump-run IRS will end all pending examinations or reviews of Trump himself

or of his businesses regarding tax matters.

Nice deal if you can get it, right?

But is this legal?

Is this corruption?

It certainly plays into the theme of Andrew Weissman's new book, Lyer's Kingdom,

How to Stop Trump's Deceit and Save America.

Andrew describes the book as providing a path forward to hold

politicians who lie to account. Andrew Weissman is professor of practice at NYU Law School and

co-host of the podcast, Maine Justice. He was previously a lead prosecutor in Special Counsel Robert

Mueller's investigation of Trump and

Russian ties in the 2016 presidential campaign. Before that, he was General Counsel at the FBI

among various prominent roles in the Bureau. Again, the new book is called Liar's Kingdom,

...