Fresh Air Terry Gross interviews Andrew Weissman on his book Liar's Kingdom
The Justice Department gives Trump an unprecedented settlement, May 20, 2026
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5828414
Andrew Weissmann, welcome to FRESH AIR. So let's talk about the IRS case. So Trump had sued the IRS for $10 billion. This was because his tax filings were leaked to The New York Times and ProPublica, not by the IRS directly. They were leaked by an employee of a contractor that the IRS had hired. And Trump claimed the IRS hadn't taken enough precautions to prevent that leak. So the judge was concerned that since the IRS was being represented by the Justice Department and Trump himself oversees the IRS 'cause it's part of the executive branch - the judge wasn't sure that there were two sides in this case. Would you explain why?
ANDREW WEISSMANN: Sure. Well, Donald Trump himself had said that, isn't this odd because I'm suing myself. And that actually got it right. And under the law, in order for there to be a legal case, there has to be what's called a case or controversy, meaning that the plaintiff and defendants want different things. And here, it was entirely collusive. And that's why when people are referring to this as a, quote, "settlement," unquote, it really isn't. This is just one party making an agreement with the same party. And so they could obviously write whatever they wanted. And here, they wrote that they would get $1.776 billion for a claim that seems, let's just say, highly, highly dubious, and it is fought by the IRS in all sorts of cases other than ones that involve Donald Trump.
GROSS: So do you think this is unprecedented, a president suing the IRS and his opponent being, like, the acting attorney general in this case, who was - I mean, he's a Trump appointee, right?
WEISSMANN: He's a Trump appointee, and he was his defense lawyer and something that people...
GROSS: Right.
WEISSMANN: ...Don't realize.
GROSS: His personal defense lawyer.
WEISSMANN: Yes. And one thing, having - I'm a lawyer. I've been a defense lawyer. One of the things that when you represent somebody, even when that representation is over, you have a continuing duty of loyalty. So now you have somebody with a continuing duty of loyalty who is entering into an agreement that it is extremely hard to see the public interest here, in other words, where the public is being represented, and that actually is what the federal judge who had the tax case said when she was very concerned about this. She said, who is actually representing the public fisc here? And my view of this is, what separates what is now in black and white from just theft, where somebody is just taking almost $1.8 billion for their own personal use?
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Liar's Kingdom: How To Stop Trump's Deceit and Save Democracy
Andrew Weissmann
on Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249108848-liar-s-kingdom
"The 2020 election was a total FRAUD!" "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." "There is NO WAY Biden got 80,000,000 votes!!!" These and other lies by Donald Trump sparked a historic insurrection to topple our democracy and undermined the public's faith in elections. The Trump administration's deceit has enabled the use of law enforcement and the military against the people, the unlawful deportation of immigrants, and the disregard of international rules meant to promote a civilized and peaceful world. Other politicians, inspired by the success of the political lie, have flooded the public square with falsehoods of their own.