Welcome to the beat. I am Ari Melba and top Republicans are gathering in Washington today at a conservative conference where several were pushing the kind of authoritarian arguments for overturning American elections and lying about voting, not only waiting into unconstitutional territory, but blatantly contradicting their own claims about why they wanted to stop those kind of MAGA attacks on democracy

after Trump's loss in the insurrection.

But we have the receipts for some of the people you see on your screen at this conference today,

including Senator Graham.

He was a Trump critic in 2015, who then became a voluble, loyal Trump supporter,

then criticized exactly what Trump was leading on the

insurrection on the night of January 6th. But now, as he faces legal pressure to testify in Georgia

for his own role in helping a Trump effort that he claimed was over when he gave his

famous enough as enough speech after Trump fans stormed the Capitol clamoring to kill Mike Pence.

I hope he runs again. If you think Trump is bad for the party, I disagree with you.

I think President Trump is good for the party.

All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. It is over. I've traveled the world with Joe. I hoped he lost. I prayed he would lose. He won. He's the legitimate president of the United States.

Some of this is pretty simple, even though people would wish it otherwise. So as to what you just

heard, fact check true. President Biden is president. That is just a simple fact. Then you have Graham's

extra statement that President Biden is the legitimate president, which undercuts much of what was

argued in the right-wing gathering we showed you briefly today,

which also included Donald Trump's first return to Washington since losing that election to the president,

the current president, the legitimate president.

And Washington's a place where the Capitol remains a crime seen under investigation in many ways,

and for the first time we know of, Trump White House aides are walking in and out of the federal buildings to talk about Trump to a grand jury, which involves a criminal probe.

There's a pensade talking while new subpoenas show federal heat on that elector fraud plot.

DOJ demanding Arizona officials cough up evidence on any communication

...