Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber, and let me tell you off top, we have a special and unusual

edition of the Beat tonight. We're launching a new series tonight. Its first installment asked

some big questions about ideas, nature, and animals. I promise you what you see on your screen

will all make sense later tonight. I'm going to ask you to go on a ride with me that might be even more far out than when we've featured funk legend

George Clinton or talked to UFOs. That's later tonight, open mind. Please stay with me for it. As you

might be able to hear, I'm pretty enthused about it. Now, actual UFOs are also back in the news.

We didn't plan that.

Fighter jet operations by the U.S. shooting some down.

We have that story tonight as well,

with the Pentagon facing pressure to provide even more information.

And Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, also here as well tonight.

So we really do have a lot cooking for you here to start the week.

I hope you stay with us for the whole hour.

We've certainly planned a full hour for you.

Right now, the top story is the kind of news that would keep rocking any former president,

especially one trying to mount a comeback campaign.

Even if, I'd be the first to admit, it could also feel almost a routine, but bad routine,

a bad kind of routine, but it feels almost routine to talk about this Mike Pence subpoena,

given all of Donald Trump's many legal problems.

The fact remains that there is this open criminal probe, and it is going higher up Trump's circle than ever before.

We all remember the Mueller probe, which upended Trump's presidency.

It sent his campaign share and top lawyer to prison.

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