It's Tuesday, May 19th, 2026 from Peachfish Productions. It's The Gist. I'm Mike Peska.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, acting in the interest of his former private client, Donald Trump, was on Capitol Hill today. He was asked some tough questions.

About the $1.8 billion, really $1.776 billion fund, that the government,

i.e. us, is going to pay Donald Trump and friends for his being inconvenienced by the investigations

that did lead to a couple of grand jury indictments but no prosecutions

federally because judges slow walk them until the Supreme Court thwarted them. The man deserves his

compensation. Blanche said, oh, this fund is just like past funds, but his Senator Chris Van

Holland noted, no, it's not. Let me ask you this, because you compared it to the Keeps Eagle 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 were not originally parties to the lawsuit.

No federal judge has approved this fund, have they, Mr. Attorney General.

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.

A judge signed off on it. A judge had nothing to do with deciding the money.

There was a judge who looked at it and signed off on it. So to compare that case to this one is incredibly deceptive. Also, the issue might be

proud boys and others who beat up cops on January 6 could get some money from this fund. Will they

be excluded? Well, no, but Blanche, I want you to know, does have concerns about that, he says.

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