The Justice Department gives Trump an unprecedented settlement

Thankfully, over at pop culture happy-hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, "Did you see that, you can say?" Yeah, obviously. Follow NPR's pop culture happy-hour wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.

“Why can't you sue a president or a presidential candidate who knowingly lies to the public?”

After all, corporate executives can be sued for lying to shareholders. This question about our inability to legally hold politicians accountable for their speech. The threats that poses to our democracy, and what we can learn from how other countries deal with these lies, are the subjects of my guest Andrew Weissman's new book, liars kingdom, how to stop Trump's deceit, and save America.

During Trump's first term, the Washington Post tabulated over 30,000 false or misleading Trump public statements. Andrew Weissman was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation and to Russian interference in the 2016 election, and whether the Russians colluded with candidate Donald Trump and his campaign.

“Weissman also served as chief of the fraud section in the Justice Department,”

and General Council of the FBI when Robert Mueller was the FBI director. Weissman was a leader of the Enron Task Force, which successfully prosecuted Enron executives for knowingly lying to shareholders by inflating Enron's profits. Earlier in his career while working in the Eastern District of New York,

he prosecuted three of the five most powerful crime families in New York.

He's now an MS now legal analyst and co-host of the podcast Main Justice. He's also a professor at the NYU Law School. We're going to begin the interview with a settlement Trump reached with the Justice Department over his lawsuit against the IRS, pertaining to the leak of his tax filings, the details of that settlement, and the new funded created were made public this week.

The judge in that case, who was considering dismissing the case, was not included in the discussions of the settlement. Andrew Weissman, 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 in Pro-Publica, not by the IRS directly that 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 because it's part of the executive branch,

the judge wasn't sure that there were two sides in this case. Would you explain why? 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 inclusive, and that's why when people”

were 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 as fought by the IRS in all sorts of cases, other than ones that involved Donald Trump. So do you think this is unprecedented, a president suing the IRS and his opponent being like the act and attorney general in this case, who was, I mean, he's a Trump appointee, right? He's a Trump appointee and he was his defense lawyer, and something that people did. Right, it's a personal defense lawyer. 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 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

is what separates what is now in black and white from just theft, where somebody is just

taking almost 1.8 billion dollars for their own personal use. Yeah, and when she says,

like who's representing the public, we the public through our taxes are paying for this agreement. Absolutely. So one of the things Terry, I am keeping my eye out for is, and I've talked to various tax consultants and sort of their assessment is this normally would be a 1.8 billion dollar recording of income to Donald Trump and his children, because they are the ones who are getting this benefit that they choose to use it for a so-called slush fund is sort of irrelevant

under the tax law's as I understand them. So is he going to be recording 1.8 billion dollars

in income? Let's leave aside that this as you said is really coming from the taxpayers

“and what I think is a very, very collusive agreement with no adversity between the defendant”

and the plaintiff. But isn't it really going to him? It's going to this fund, right? Yeah, but that that's secondary. In other words, this is Donald Trump saying, "I am settling my claim against the tax authorities." And then the fact that he chooses to spend it by saying, "Okay, I'm directing that the money be used for x, y, and z." That doesn't make it not income to Donald Trump. He is still getting this as a result of he says his claim against the IRS.

That's the whole reason that the D.A.J. is styling this as a settlement agreement. But that has tax consequences. And I'm going to really be interested to see how do they get out of that mouth trap that they've created for themselves, which is this, that's I understand it from tax

“authorities. This should be recorded as income to Donald Trump. And it's a huge amount of money,”

and the whole lawsuit might have just been thrown out because the judge asked both sides to write briefs explaining if they thought they were really two sides in this case, because if they were weren't two sides, she would dismiss the case. And those briefs were due today. So the settlement was made before those briefs were submitted and before we knew if there was even a case, or if the judge was just going to throw it out. To make matters worse, Terry,

what of the briefs that an Amicus wrote, this sort of friend of the court brief, was from former tax authorities saying that what the IRS is doing with comparable cases is fighting them, because their all sorts of defenses that the IRS has to the lawsuit, the easiest one, the easiest defense is that Donald Trump's claim was out of time. He had two years to bring it, and he didn't. So that means that the amount of money, if the IRS were to prevail on that,

and it seems very open and shut, the amount of money that the public would owe Donald Trump for

this claim is zero. And I don't do math in public, but I know that zero is less the $1.8 billion.

But meanwhile, Trump will be making money on this deal because Trump, his family, and their businesses will have a immunity from ever paying any taxes, ever, ever, forever, related to current ongoing investigations into their taxes. And I've seen estimates as much as $100 million in savings from that. No one knows exactly how much it would be, but it might be as high as that. So they're saving a lot of money on this deal in taxes, in addition to everything else.

Yes, that is the piece that broke that was not in the main story and it came out this one piece of paper that can be termed a general release, giving up the government's claims to money from Donald Trump, his family, his businesses. The way I look at this is Donald Trump as president has the pardon power. And he can try and pardon all sorts of people. He may even try to pardon

“himself, but this is what you need to remember about the pardon power. It relates to criminal cases.”

It doesn't relate to civil cases. So what he has done here is essentially given himself a civil pardon. So he can sort of have sort of blanket immunity both on the criminal side and on the civil side. So let's talk about the fund. What is the official purpose of the fund and who is supposed

authority being able to put a stop to this, but assuming it goes forward, this money will be used

by a commission set up by the attorney general with five people appointed by him. They can be removed. Appointed by the acting attorney general in this case. Exactly. Yeah. And so they're very, very beholden to the wishes of the president and the acting attorney general. And they will adjudicate and decide who is going to get this money. And so that is an area where everyone has sort rightly highly concerned that this could go to J6 defendants who are criminally convicted,

including people who attacked police officers, including people that committed heinous crimes,

“even after being pardoned by the president. So it really, I think the correct term that people are”

using is a slush fund that really means that people who not only were pardoned by the president after being found guilty of a crime are now actually going to be paid. So you sort of have a paid army of people who don't have to worry about criminal liability and are actually going to be able to put in a claim to be compensated for their activities that are criminal and have been found to be criminal. Yeah. And in order to qualify for this fund, you're supposed to be a victim

of government weaponization. So you face reprisals for personal political or ideological reasons. So, you know, there's a lot of assumptions that the people who get compensated will be people who are

“friends of Trump supporters of Trump, MAG of people. But the recipients are going to be kept secret.”

We're not going to know who they are unless it's leaked. It's going to be, yeah, so that's when where I would say we don't, we know that in the papers so far there is no provision for this being public. Now it could end up being that the people who are in charge of this decide that it all should be public that there should be transparency. And in the nature of transparency, I should tell you what I'm being somewhat fescious, but it's in some ways not fescious, Terry, which is, I was the subject

of two executive orders by this president, one of which was struck down by a federal judge

finding that my personal first amendment rights were violated. So I actually have a judicial finding

that I am a victim of weaponization and that my constitutional rights were violated. So I technically an eligible for compensation by this fund. No, I don't think there is a snowballs chance that I am going to be compensated by a group of five people appointed by Donald Trump or somebody who is his amannuensis. But it tells you that we could see a real politicization about how the fund is distributed where people who are actually factually victims of weaponization do not get money,

but people who are criminals and adjudicated criminals are paid. Do you think you will apply just as a kind of test case and just to see for yourself what the president is like for compensation?

“I think that if no one else does, I think it's very important for people to test this and if”

it's not being done by anyone else, I will do it because I think there are many, many ways that this program can be legally challenged. But one is what's called viewpoint discrimination. So

if somebody like me were to sue saying, wait a second, I am absolutely comparable to the people

that you are giving funds to, then that's something that a court can step in and say that you have violated either the equal protection clause, you have violated the Minister of Procedures Act, and they're various challenges. On the fly, I'm not going to rattle off all the ways this could be challenged, but I do think that that is sort of a back-end point that we should keep our eye on in terms of how this is adjudicated because it surely is going to be the subject of litigation.

So you were as the question of will January 6th insurrectionists, including those who attack the police and face the building and threaten everybody in it,

compensated. So Chris Van Hollen, Democratic Senator from Maryland, asked that question to Todd

Blanche, the Acting Attorney General yesterday, at a previously scheduled hearing about the Justice Department's 2027 budget. So I want to play an excerpt of that. So here's Chris Van Hollen, questioning Todd Blanche. Well, individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this fund. Well, as it makes plain, anyway, is that just let me know if they're eligible for the fund. As was made plain yesterday, anybody in this country is eligible to apply

if they believe they're victim weapons. Mr. Attorney General, let me ask you this, are there going to be rules that say that if you've assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer

“or committed a violent crime, you will not be eligible. Why not make that a rule?”

I expected that. Well, because I'm not one of the commissioners setting up the rules. I expect point a will board of the five members. Aren't you Mr. Attorney General. Pardon me?

You're a pointy four of the five members. I am a pointy one. You can finally set up the rules. I

would hope you would make a rule that anyone convicted of assaulting a police officer or a violent crime is simply not eligible. They should not apply. Well, let me, let me ask you this, because you compared it to the keeps evil case. But I think you know full well that in that case, the settlement agreement was approved by a federal judge, including the payments to people who are not originally parties to the lawsuit. No federal judge has approved this fund. Have they

Mr. Attorney General? No, no, no, federal judge did approve this. So that's a big difference between

“this case and the case that you compared it to. No, it's not. Did a judge sign off on this case?”

No, a judge did sign off on the other one. Yes, but your question was whether it's a big difference. It's not. Of course it is because that allows for an independent person to look at it rather than the hand. There was no independence. There was no independence. There was a single commissioner that a judge signed off on a judge had nuster to generalizing the money. It was a judge who looked at it and signed off on it. So to compare that case to this one is incredibly deceptive.

Andrew Wiseman, what's your reaction to that exchange? So one of the things that I found disingenuous is that Todd Blanche, as the acting attorney general, has the authority to have created rules that said that if you are convicted, fell in, if you have assaulted police officers, he all of and other categories. He had the authority to say that you cannot apply for these funds that you are not a victim of weaponization. Especially since there's a criminal justice system

that can handle that. In other words, if anyone thought that were wrongly convicted. So to try and duck by saying, well, that would be left to others to decide, he's the person that actually set up the fund. And so he had the power to set up those rules. Also, the senator was totally right to point out that here, the Department of Justice went out of its way, not to submit the settlement papers to the federal judge overseeing this case. And the judge pointed that out that there

was no settlement papers, no settlement agreements that were before her that she could adjudicate. Instead, the government moved to dismiss the case. And obviously, they thought, you know what,

we probably should never have even brought this case. We should have just done this as a private agreement.

And so there is no independent authority that has approved this. And that is why to go to back to what we've initially were saying, this seems so collusive because you have the government on both sides with the same interests and the thing that seems so apparent is that you have embodied within the Department of Justice, somebody who is the personal defense lawyer with a continuing duty of loyalty to the president of the United States as his personal attorney.

Is it fair to say that the head of the Justice Department didn't end run around the judicial

“system around the court? I think that is that it's fair. I think I would broaden that to say”

he did an end run around the oath of office to all of us to represent our interest. And that's why there have been ceremony reports that the head of legal ethics at the Department of Justice who has similarly removed. But he gave advice, which happens all the time, saying that Todd Blanche should not be sitting on things that are directly related to his prior representation of the president. And obviously my view that obviously was not followed because we're seeing

of the president personally. But they are not in my view in the interest of the public. Let me reintroduce you my guest is Andrew Weisman and he was a lead prosecutor on the Mueller investigation and his new book is called Liars Kingdom. So we'll be right back. I'm Terry Gross and this is fresh air. You mentioned that you are the subject of two of President Trump's executive orders.

Can you tell us about those executive orders? Let's see the first one. I was an extremely good

“company, Terry. I was in the company of I think Joe Biden, Kamal Harris, Hillary Clinton,”

and many others. I tell an anecdote in my book that when that got implemented by Tulsi Gabor, she doodifully announced, I think, on social media, that she had stripped the security clearance of Andrew Weisman, but she mispelled my name. So I'd like to formally apologize to that Andrew Weisman for being the cause of his security clearance being stripped. Anyway, that was the first. Well, you didn't even have a security clearance anymore. That is true.

That is not only did they get my name wrong, but I had been out of government. So it's one thing to strip somebody. It was a security clearance when they're in government. But I was working as a professor. There was no reason for me to have a security clearance. So it was all very

“performative or uninformed. Yes, I think both of those could be true. The second one was more”

serious, and it is actually the subject of ongoing litigation. It was one of the many executive orders that in Trump's 2.0 term in office. He issued with respect to law firms. So one of them was for a law firm that I had worked at, which was January and Block, where I was a partner. And that executive order that was issued, I believe, in March of last year, featured my name prominently, because one of the main sins of General and Block was having hired me. And so that

executive order stripped General and Block of all sorts of rights and privileges. They were not the only firm targeted. I think is everyone in listening to this news that there were many firms that cave to that pressure. There were some firms that did not cave to that pressure. All four of the executive orders that were challenged in court were immediately struck down. It's sort of really,

it's it's easy to sort of normalize this and forget that as this administration, Trump's second

administration started, he issued four executive orders with four separate federal judges immediately striking them down saying they violated the first amendment. There's a now upon appeal.

“The oral argument just took place. I think I listened to all of it and I think most people thought”

that it went very, very well for the law firms and not so well for the government. Yeah, and the law firms that made an agreement with the Trump administration agreed to like many hours and millions of dollars of time spent doing pro bono work on behalf of the Trump administration. Yes, almost a billion dollars collectively. But there's also sort of a hidden process to this, which is beyond those law firms. There's been a chilling effect on major law firms doing

pro bono work where they would sue the government for various things. That used to be when I was in private practice, that was part of what you did with a righteous case and sometimes you wanted

sometimes you didn't win. But you never were vilified. There was no retribution from the government

for taking on a cause and they'll slowly advocating. So this is really, really pernicious tactic that as I said, it was struck down by every court that has heard it and I think they're going to lose also in DC. It's worth remembering. This is the case where on a Monday, a few weeks ago, the government announced that they were not going to appeal any more, any of the four orders. There was going to leave them in place. That got a lot of publicity and then Tuesday morning,

the government had to come in to court and say, oh, never mind. When we said we were going to withdraw, we now are withdrawing our withdrawal and they then proceeded on the appeal. So not a terribly good look if you're that in court saying these are orders that pass the constitutional

to say corporate executives for false misleading statements for knowing lies, to political candidates and people in office who there's no laws to protect us from them when they knowingly lie to us and there's so much at stake when they do lie to us.

“So why are politicians and those serving an office exempt from that kind of law?”

That is exactly the question that drove why I wrote this book. I was dealing with the issue of what I think is sort of rampant lying by politicians and candidates. I looked at enron leaders that you've referenced in thinking, why is it that we care about the value of stock more than we care about the ballot box? And thought about all of the ways that it's a crime to a lot of the public about stock. It's a crime to lie to Congress. It's a crime to lie to the

Department of Justice, to the FBI, to prosecute us to banks over and over again. I was thinking about it. My career all of the ways that we hold those people account and we don't say

the first amendment precludes that because in all of those settings civil and criminal,

we actually take action and so I saw this as a gap and looked at what is going on in our country,

“what kind of structures would there be if we did have some of that made this harder to do?”

And then I did something which Americans don't like to do all that often, which is looking overseas to see what do other countries do and that was really eye-opening. You say that Trump knew the difference between lies and falsehoods because he said things in public that he didn't say under oath to Congress. So can you talk about that a little bit about the difference between what you can say to Congress and what you can say to the electorate

and why you think Trump really understood that difference? So I think a best example of that

might be the first impeachment. The one where the so-called perfect call between the then

“current president of Ukraine, Zelensky and the president of the United States. Donald Trump”

was vociferous in the public airways saying that this was a perfect call saying there was no quid pro quo, even though to me it is the same absolutely apparent that there was and the whole context of it was to coerce Zelensky to say that he was doing a fraud investigation of Joe Biden and his son and the sort of gun to his head was the withholding of military aid that had been congressionally authorized and approved. So the president said over and over again publicly that

that's not what happened. This is perfect, but he never testified before Congress. He didn't even

submit a statement whether under oath or not to Congress saying what he was saying publicly and what I think is the reason is if you lie whether under oath or not to Congress, if you submit something false to Congress, that is prescribed by the criminal laws, that is, there are consequences to that. So I imagine part of the fear of holding a political candidate and those in office liable for false or misleading statements knowingly made to the public is the idea of infringing

on those people's, you know, on the politicians and office holders first amendment rights to free speech, but free speech has limitations when there's victims of that speech. So is that the reason why we don't have anything holding those politicians accountable? I do think that is a big part of it, but it is complicated because the state of the law is that there is no first amendment protection for false speech itself. In other words, there's many cases from our Supreme Court

saying that there is no value or minimal value and different justice take different views on that, but that false speech is not something core to the first amendment. The concern is,

So as you mentioned, I work for MSNow as a legal analyst. And so one of the things that I learned when

I started working for MSNow is that there's something called a standards division and what standards does is it goes over what it is that people say to make sure it is accurate and supported and not false whether deliberately or not. And there's a whole variety of reasons for that. Some of it is because of course you want to be a good journalist, but another is you don't want

“to get sued for defamation and so that's what standards looks at. And this is something that”

responsible organizations of all stripes, not just liberal or conservative responsible organizations do.

And no one says, well, wait a second, that's an improper chilling of the first amendment.

It's viewed as part and parcel of responsible journalism of a responsible fourth estate. And so even in that area, the argument of a sort of chilling effect doesn't carry the day. Would the electorate have standing in any kind of lawsuit? That is a great question. I sort of make this point of the an oddity in law, which is if you are Rudy Giuliani and you say, this is what Ruby Freeman and Inshaid Moss did. You've identified

those people and they then have been hurt and they can bring a claim. Or if you say dominion voting systems, engaged and fraud, they have been hurt. But if you just say in the sort of passive voice, there was fraud in the election, but you don't say it was dominion. Even though all of us are the victims,

“the state of the law is that you need to have sort of individualized harm, even though we're all”

harmed. So it is an oddity in a quirk. And that is one of the reasons that the law could develop to deal with this in a way, for instance, if it was a criminal law, then that is something that is a harm that can be vindicated by the state. Let's take a short break here. My guest is Andrew Weissman. He was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation. His new book is called Liar's Kingdom. We'll be right back. This is fresh air. So let's look at Brazil. It's one of the

countries that you look at that has a law that seems to be working, that punishes politicians in those in office who knowingly lie to the public. Tell us about this law and how it's been used. Sure. Well, one of the things that was fascinating for me was looking at Bolsonaro, who was the then president of Brazil and the remarkable, remarkable similarity is between his political career and the things that he has said and done comparing that to our current

president. And this is a man who ultimately was criminally prosecuted for engaging in an

insurrection after he lost the election. But to your question, before he was criminally prosecuted and convicted of that, he had been accused of making false claims about their being fraud in the election where he claimed that he had won when he hadn't. And that was something that after due process and a trial where he would happen in the United States, he was allowed to present to evidence and make arguments, etc. The court concluded that he had engaged in this intentional

false conduct and the result was that he was barred from holding office for a set period of time. So in so many ways, Brazil has dealt with, as as of other countries, what to do with political leaders who either engaging in crimes like insurrection or intentional falsehoods and have a system to deal with that and deter that kind of behavior. So as you pointed out, what Bolsonaro was

“charged with criminally was participating and I think helping to incite. Am I right about that?”

An insurrection? Absolutely. Yeah, and so very similar to what many people think Trump has done regarding January 6. And Trump's reaction to the prosecution and imprisonment of Bolsonaro,

and personal sanctions against the judges involved in that case. How do you, if you're the

president of another country, personally sanctioned judges in Brazil? You know, he has made our presidents and made similar claims with respect to BB Netanyahu saying it's a disgrace that he is on trial. And I could understand American president and other presidents condemning a show trial.

“But you have to have a reason to point that out. But I don't think that is what was going on here.”

I looked at this and thought the president of the United States is concerned about the

president of countries that have figured out how to hold political leaders to account. And I

looked at that and not just Brazil. It's also true in France and in England. We have that also in many states in the United States. So what would you like to see the U.S. borrow from Brazil's law? What lesson can we learn? So I think there are a number of them. But I think one is very, very big picture, which is understanding that as wonderful as the constitution is, we see the flaws

“and how their no structural checks and balances to much of what's going on. In terms of what I am”

proposing, it is to see some version of a criminal law where if you have a politician who intentionally

lies about certain subjects, let's just take the Brazilian example about the material fraud and election or the British example is intentionally lying about your opponent when you're running for office where they have actually stripped someone of being able to be in office after concluding after trial and to process that they engage in that conduct. To me, that is one of the things that we have to think about, how are we going to deal with this, especially in a media environment where

we really cannot count on the truth will out, that the answer to false speech is just more true speech. Let's take a short break here. My guest is Andrew Weissman. He was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation. His new book is called Liars Kingdom. We'll be right back. This is fresh air. What are your concerns about FBI director Cash Patel? The Atlantic had a big investigative piece saying that he's been known to be drinking. There are times that he couldn't be found. Time that it was

“hard to wake him. What are your concerns about his ability and his commitment to the job?”

So, he has denied that and he has sued the Atlantic. I know this is easy for me to say, but I actually would love to see the Atlantic ask for an immediate trial so that the public can hear the truth and if it turns out, but the Atlantic says is true, then it will really, both call Cash Patel's bluff and it will also put an end to this kind of tactic by the administration of fighting news organizations simply because they don't like what's being said.

Patel has reportedly been polygrafing FBI agents to see who leaked to the Atlantic. Is there any precedent for that? I'm not aware of any polygrafing and doing an investigation would be appropriate and a menatha of a sort of former government lawyer if we were talking about the revelation of classified information or if there was an ongoing criminal investigation and there was a concern about somebody of the FBI leaking bad information. But for just a personal

derogatory information, do we have adults in the room who have a thick skin and keep their mind on the ball who are focusing on what it takes to keep this country safe? I mean, being ahead of the FBI is a job that requires you to be present if not physically to be available and ready

and it was my privilege and obligation to do so. What are your concerns about if there's an

“authoritarian president? And if Congress is going with an authoritarian president's wishes and a lot”

of the courts as well as a majority of the Supreme Court seem to often take a cue from the president from the authoritarian president or at least seem to agree with the authoritarian president how the laws you suggested could still be abused? There is the potential for abusive and there's no doubt that if there is some weapon lying about like a check-off gun that Donald Trump or people like him will be tempted to use it. We are witnessing in my view a series of

retributive indictments and the weaponization of the Department of Justice in the grossest way and just to be clear at Terry as you noted, I've worked in the Department of Justice for

21 years with Republican and Democratic administrations and I've never seen that in any of those

administrations. There just wasn't that directives coming from the White House to the Department of

“Justice. But I do think that one of the forums that I think has held up well and is one of the”

few forums that we have right now in our system is the court system. I tell the story of the wonderful old federal district judge, Amy Burman Jackson, who said when she was overseeing many of the

prosecutions in the Mueller investigation, she mentioned, she said courts are a place that facts

and the law still matters. And so one of the things that I am putting my faith in and maybe it comes from years of having been in the court system is the ability of courts to hold people to a count after affording them due process in a way that we are not seeing it happen and the market

“place in this so-called marketplace of ideas that there is a way to try and harness the truth telling”

and the factual nature of what goes on in court, including with jurors, you know, every day United States citizens rising to the occasion in that setting to try and get out of the huge problem that we are at facing right now. Andrew Weissman, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you so much for having me. Andrew Weissman's new book is called Lyers Kingdom. He's now on MS now legal analyst, co-host of the podcast main justice and a professor at the NYU Law School.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, our guest will be after Rose Burn. She's nominated for a Tony for her leading role in the revival of no cowards, fallen angels. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the film if I had legs I'd kick you. She co-starred in the films, bridesmaids, spy and neighbors, and in the TV shows, platonic and damages. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Philis Meyers and Reboldonado Lauren Crenzel Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thia Challener, Susan Ekindi, and Abelman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Roberta Shorock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Groen.