Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melburgh, and let me tell you off the top, we have an exclusive

tonight. A convicted and newsmaking figure from Trump World, you may remember, and former Giuliani

ally Lev Parnas, is here on the beat for his first interview since going to jail for crimes

related to Trump's Ukraine plot against the Bidens and a lot of other campaign Michugas,

as it's called in the law.

Well, this interview is tonight, and I can tell you as a factual matter, you literally

won't see it anywhere else.

So stay with us.

Also tonight, special counsel Jack Smith has made a new aggressive move.

We have a legal breakdown for you.

And Mike Pence going public on this legal strategy that I've been telling you about, how the man who

has really claimed repeatedly that he was the hero of January 6th now wants to resist telling the

truth about January 6th, which at a minimum is odd, if not downright, legally suspicious.

So I'll tell you, we have, I would say, a lot. And yet our top

story right now isn't even one of those potentially important developments. Our top story is a

setback for the most powerful conservative megaphone in America, literally, measurably. And it's also

drawing in new legal heat on the alleged liars and

Trump allies who have been a part of an attack on our democracy, your right to vote for many

years. This is a case we've been tracking. So if you watch the beat regularly, you may recall it,

but there are new developments tonight. There's this wave of lawsuits, some of them quite effective,

against alleged defamation, lies, and specifically the powerful Fox News Empire.

I'm talking about these multi-billion dollar lawsuits about the conspiracy theories that many view as a direct line to feeding the insurrection.

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