I need to talk to you about this Trump inaugural committee.

It's been subpoenaed for documents.

Earlier this week, we started to get these reports that federal prosecutors were investigating

the president's inaugural committee.

The way they set up their inaugural committee, how much they raised, how they seemingly

raised it, was really a recipe for corruption from the very beginning. And when I heard all this,

I knew I wanted to get Iliam merits on the line. You know, you've been trying to figure out what

happened to this inauguration for, like, how long now? About a year. He's the co-host of the Trumping

podcast, and he's been thinking about the inauguration

ever since he heard how much money the committee raised, $107 million.

At the time, I actually didn't know how much an inauguration costs.

And then I started comparing it with the wedding of like Harry and Megan and other kind of like big ticket things, which cost like a fraction of what Donald Trump's inauguration did.

And then I started talking with some earlier inauguration planners.

And they were like, yeah, this is double what the next most expensive inauguration cost.

And they couldn't even figure out how you could get to that

number of $107 million. Okay, so do we know where that money went? Not really.

Ilya says that while this $107 million price tag is shocking, to understand what really

went down during President Trump's inauguration, first we've got to explain how events like

this one work in the first place.

Inocurations are this window of opportunity, a way to access someone who's about to have enormous power, before some of the checks and balances that come with that power are in full effect.

This has always been true.

It's just that previous administrations felt a little self-conscious about it.

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