Former federal prosecutor and MS NOW legal analyst Andrew Weissmann slammed Donald Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund on Thursday’s “The Briefing,” telling guest host Michael Steele that “every single taxpayer is being robbed” by the administration. 

The author of the newly published “Liar’s Kingdom: How to Stop Trump’s Deceit and Save America” said that the nearly $1.8 billion that Trump’s Department of Justice could dole out to those who claim to be victims of the “weaponization” of government is money that belongs to the American people, adding that it was “total theft.”

Weissmann, who served as chief of the Fraud Section of the Justice Department during the Obama administration, also told Steele he takes issue with the arrangement, the result of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, being referred to as a “settlement.”

“A settled agreement is when you have two parties who are adverse to each other and they have different views, and the parties get together and they say, ‘OK, you have an argument, I have an argument,’ and you sort of work out what the agreement should be,” he explained. “Donald Trump, as he himself said, is on both sides of this; he is settling with himself.”

“The lawsuit was a fig leaf,” he added. “I understand why people are concerned about how the money would be spent, but I really think it’s important for people to focus on this: The money should never be used at all in the first place.”

Recommended

Allison Detzel

Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”