Why do we have to pay into the new Anti-Weaponization Fund?
5/29/202644 min
The President has created a 1.776 billion dollar fund of taxpayer money he can direct to whoever he wants. Huh? How did this happen, and what might happen next? We talk to Pro Publica’s Jesse Eisinger, an investigative reporter who has played a strange role in this whole story. Listen to our series with Jesse: Why is it so hard to tax billionaires? (Part 1) and (Part 2) Check out the new ProPublica podcast Paper Trail. Support the show! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsPJ Vogt· Host0:00
[upbeat music] This is Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. No question too big, no question too small, no question too taxing. We were not supposed to have an episode this week, and yet here we are, all because of a big national news story that has been developing, a story that we here at the show have not been able to stop talking about: President Trump's anti-weaponization fund. The origin story of that fund actually begins years ago with an enormous IRS leak, a leak that let the American public see both Trump's tax returns, as well as the tax information of hundreds of American billionaires. It was obvious at the time that this was a huge story. We covered it here at Search Engine. What was not obvious, though, was where it would lead. Jesse Eisinger, a journalist at ProPublica, played a weirdly large role in the chain reaction that's led us to today. So we asked him back to Search Engine Studios to help us understand what's going on here.