The Justice Department gives Trump an unprecedented settlement

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Terry Gross· Host0:14

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 Weissmann's new book, Liar's 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 Weissmann was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Russians colluded with candidate Donald Trump and his campaign. Weissmann also served as chief of the fraud section in the Justice Department and general counsel of the FBI when Robert Mueller was the FBI director. Weissmann 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