Welcome to the Beat. I'm Ari Melbert, and we are covering several big stories for you tonight.

We begin with what has been clearly a type of confusion or double talk by the Trump administration over their controversial embattled, currently on pause, according to the courts,

$1.8 billion fund for convicts and defendants. You may recall that the acting attorney general

Todd Blanche was on so much defense, including a real outcry in Congress with Republicans pushing

back, that he said to Congress, which is about as real as it gets, that they simply would not be

moving forward with this fund. In other words, no money taken by them from you, the taxpayer, to go out to Trump

allies. That's where it stood for a little while until today the president saying this.

So can you explain why you decided to drop the anti-weaponization fund? So I love it. I think it's so important. Is the $1.8 billion dollar DOJ fund dead or is it on hold?

It's, uh, I'd have to ask the lawyers. I don't know. I know one thing. The weaponization,

are you talking about the weaponization fund? Yeah, what's your decision? The weaponization fund,

uh, as far as I'm concerned, was a beautiful thing.

He doesn't know. As the lawyers, it's a beautiful thing. So he's clearly continuing to try to give support to something that even Republicans say is wrong that goes too far that would potentially reward people who physically attacked police, who were convicted of various crimes if it goes to

Jan 6 people. And again, different than what is Attorney General claim to Congress, which is kind of

basically like an under oath scenario. It's obviously wrong and usually illegal to lie to Congress.

Trump is sort of stepping up in a way that he didn't have to. So he's at least undercutting the

Attorney General's message. The whole thing is paused anyway under court order right now by the courts when you look

at the fund. Now, when you go over to where the money's coming from, the Treasury Chief was asked

about this and sounded more like what we've heard from the acting AG.

Chairman Crapo, ranking member, I'm unable to discuss most of this because of ongoing

litigation.

Yeah, I know you like, everybody likes to say that, but the constitutional...

We like to follow the law, Senator.

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