NYT: Trump Plotting to Take $230M in Taxpayer Funds

0:00There's only one Ozempic. Hello, I'm Ozempic. Because this ad is 30 seconds, I can't get into everything I'm FDA-approved to do, so I'm just going to play my jingle again. But first, ask your doctor about which FDA-approved uses of me, the Ozempic pen, may be right for you. Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about Ozempic semaglutide injection, 2 milligrams. Only Novo Nordisk makes FDA-approved Ozempic. Now here's that jingle again. There's only one Ozempic. Hey there, I'm Kat. I'm a college athlete. I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, which caused back pain and stiffness every day.

0:40With Cosentix, I'm able to stay active. Cosentix Secukinumab is prescribed for adults with active psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, or non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis. Available in both IV infusion and self-injection. Don't use if allergic to Cosentix. Get checked for TB before starting. Increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur, like TB or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Some are fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or planned to, or if IBD symptoms develop or worsen.

1:16Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTICS or cosentics.com. Move and feel better. Ask a rheumatologist about Cosentix. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber, and I'll tell you right off top, our lead-off guest tonight is the top Democrat in Congress, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. We're going to get into this major news on Trump trying to pocket money from the executive branch, the shutdown, and the No Kings protests. So we appreciate the leader being here. He'll join us momentarily. The story rocking the Trump White House right now is about rank profiteering, an ethics scandal about conflicts and corruption.

1:56The headline is President Trump is trying to move over$200 million from taxpayers into his own pocket. It is a blatant grift. It's an ethics scandal. But it actually gets worse in the details of why the president claims that he should be paid out of the federal funds you, of course, pay through your tax dollars. Trump demanding that his own DOJ, which he still oversees, of course, in the cabinet, pay him$230 million from taxpayers. He cites his own conduct that led to past federal investigations as the reasoning. Now, just off top here, no president has ever tried to take money directly for himself from the DOJ like this.

2:37Never. The plot comes also as an escalation of a range of profiteering and ethics scandals by Trump himself as well as his family members. He's insisted on profiteering from his businesses while in office. No other president's done that. and most other presidents have had other jobs or worked at law firms, but they cut that off in office. He has not. He's offered White House access recently to crypto investors. Again, that's not political campaign donors only. It's just people involved in enriching him and his family's crypto funds. His family also trades on his government power across several businesses.

3:13It's almost hard to keep track of. So this damning bombshell from the New York Times today comes in this context. It's about the money first, shaking down the government second, a kind of a king attitude of, hey, he is the state, the state is him, even as there is a no kings backlash that we've all been covering. And then basically third, Trump is claiming the reason, because they're still pushing some sort of reason, the taxpayer should pay him, compensate him, is because of his own conduct that led to him being under federal investigation. And by the way, I'm going to make this point briefly and then show you some examples But other individuals in and out of government have been under investigation Sometimes you're cleared or there's no trial Other times you get in trouble You might recall other presidents have had special counsels President Clinton was investigated a lot The notion that you are subject to the rule of law and investigated Has never led to massive compensation from the taxpayer And here's one example that Trump cites So I'm showing you what he says justifies this and it is honestly laughable.

4:18As a former president, Donald Trump infamously took secret documents back home, lied to the government about having them, basically hid them, dared them to come back and get them. And they did. His unusual actions ultimately led to a federal search, which busted him. Remember, he was in the wrong. They found the missing documents. I've got some on the screen to remind you. They were at his Mar-a-Lago property, not exactly a obscure hiding place. If you are a former president, people know where you live, but that's where he hid them until the government said, we're taking them back. He was at the time a citizen, a former president.

4:55He was in the wrong. The search was proven to be right. Trump, of course, you might recall, was indicted for that. And in all fairness, he was not ultimately put on trial or convicted. The Supreme Court delayed that case. And then, of course, it was dropped when he became president again. That's also the rule of law. He benefited from that. That's okay. But there is no legal doubt about the original misconduct by Donald Trump that led to the search. The search was valid. The search was authorized by an independent judge at the time in advance. It was later upheld. The higher courts never held otherwise.

5:28It was a valid search to see if he had stolen secret documents, which he did. I'm reminding you of this in some detail. You might say, okay, Ari, We get it. We remember. But because tonight Trump wants to take your money that you pay your taxes with and take it for himself. And the reason, he says, is those documents that he was searched, investigated that way, that the DOJ should compensate him for the valid search where he was in the wrong. Trump is trying to do all this to enrich himself. But he also clearly wants to destroy the traditional credible independence of the Justice Department. His past attorney general, say in the first term, never signed off on anything like this.

6:14It is hard to imagine, say, Attorney General Barr doing it now. But Trump, of course, has moved on to a different type of appointee. He stalked the DOJ with his own criminal defense lawyers, not because they have experience running the prosecution side, they run the defense side, not because they have a ton of DOJ experience, but because they are personally loyal to him in those cases. And now they're the ones that would be compensating him with your money over the cases that they worked on. They're on both sides of this case now, which is an ethical conflict exactly of the type that many Richard Painter and others have warned against.

6:49The current attorney general also fired the DOJ's top ethics advisor, one of those many stories that are hard to keep track of, while the department now claims that the ethics advisors at DOJ will be the ones to maybe weigh in or bless this. Again, Trump is trying to take taxpayer money from this DOJ process, your paid money. And he's also made a statement about this, that if it's understood to be referencing this situation, this is a misleading statement at best, where he claims that he already has a lawsuit on this and that he's suing himself. I have a lawsuit that was doing very well. And when I became president, I said, I'm sort of suing myself.

7:31I don't know. Had he settled the lawsuit? I'll say, give me X dollars, right? And I don't know what to do with the lawsuit. It's a great lawsuit. And now I won. It sort of looks bad. I'm suing myself, right? So I don't know. But that was a lawsuit that was very strong. It went on like that. In Trumpian fashion, he is both demanding something that no president has ever tried. Obviously, it's a type of scandal because plenty of people, whether you like him or his policies or not, don't think the DOJ that he controls should be issuing checks to him. and why stop at 200 million? Why not billions? Why not tens of billions?

8:07This happens in other countries. Rachel Maddow, among others, have warned that when countries lose their controls, their checks and balances, one of the first types of abuse is the corruption, kleptocracy, and self-enrichment that officials can benefit from because there's no one there to stop them. Now, it's not clear which DOJ officials would ultimately back this scandal, this quite corrupt request. The Times has reported on the plot, on the process. But if you are a DOJ lawyer, this type of thing could land you under investigation in any future DOJ that would follow or enforce government ethics rules.

8:44Trump is also demanding to be paid for basically two sets of probes, the search I mentioned and the 2016 Russia probe. But remember, the idea that DOJ would be ordered to pay Trump for mishandling secret material that led to a search is a kind of a Trump-MAGA-autocratic-era equivalent of Gotham's finest paying the Joker for investigating him. And remember, the Trump-Bondi DOJ is also using the same type of classified probe against one of their apparent critics, John Bolton. Trump has attacked him for criticizing him. And so they're not talking about compensating Bolton for the exact same type of secret document search.

9:33No, they're grinding on forward because obviously there are two different sets of rules here. And Trump is not hiding that. Like other people who've tried to break the rule of law, he celebrates it. He wants to make it very clear that he should be able to get away with anything and get paid for it. while several other officials are facing official actions from indictments to subpoenas that are, including Bolton there, being targeted by DOJ. Their lawyers, several of them, allege that this is selective prosecution, that it ultimately could be tossed that way. One of the faces you see there was the indicted Democratic Congressman McIver for an interaction outside an ICE facility, where similar charges against the mayor of that same area already fell apart.

10:15They were withdrawn. She, though, was back in court today in that case. Here's how she describes the Trump DOJ's approach. This was on The Beat. Anyone who is a critic of this administration and this president who holds this administration accountable, they are targets. They become on Trump's hit list. And then you have them intimidating you, bullying you, charging you, you know, bringing up trumped up charges. I mean, this is real life. This is happening. To be a critic isn't a crime. This is real life. The Justice Department is one of the most powerful parts of the government, which is why the Constitution and our laws protect against abuse there.

10:55Because the power to investigate, to search, to arrest, to try, to imprison, and sometimes to take human life, those are some of the greatest powers the government wields. And now it is the DOJ, this Justice Department, that is in the core, the fulcrum of Donald Trump's efforts to break the protections on that, to turn it into a weapon, to use it as a kind of, well, as John Bolton said, a kind of Stalinist police state against his critics. And now tonight, apparently, it is also the next chapter of Donald Trump's efforts to grift, to turn the DOJ, in addition, on the side, into his personal ATM with your taxpayer dollars.

11:36I want to bring in as promised House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Good evening. Your response first to that DOJ story. Well, the Trump Department of Injustice at this point in time is completely and totally out of control. The Department of Injustice has been weaponized to target Trump critics and adversaries and perceived enemies in ways that undermine the notion of this country as one. anchored in the rule of law. And now, of course, as you've pointed out, Donald Trump is trying to use the Department of Injustice as part of his ongoing pay-to-play scheme, the largest that we've seen in the history of the country, and he's doing it without any shame.

12:26And it remains to be seen whether anyone within the administration is willing to actually stand up to him at this point in time, which is why we need a Congress to actually conduct itself like a separate and co-equal branch of government, as opposed to what we've seen under House Republicans, which is just a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda. Would this be a valid use of taxpayer funds and can Congress do anything about it? Well, it's a completely and totally invalid use of taxpayer funds. The irony of it all is that the government is shut down right now. It remains shuttered because Donald Trump and Republicans are unwilling to find the resources necessary to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits and prevent tens of millions of people from experiencing dramatically increased premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

13:15But he has all the time in the world to engage in another grift to enrich himself for legitimate investigation that occurred under the prior administration. It is definitively illegal. Congress has the power of the purse. And you can't simply transfer $230 million of taxpayer funds because Donald Trump has directed his sycophants within his administration to do just that. And so I expect that if they were to engage in this type of unlawful action. Of course, they will be sued aggressively immediately. And I think, Ari, as you've pointed out, appropriately so, the statute of limitations on all of this behavior is five years.

14:03And so accountability is coming for all of these people who are engaging in real life criminal activity at the behest of Donald Trump. Supreme Court may have given him some immunity. It hasn't given any of these other sycophants immunity. Right. As you mentioned, and I mentioned that our reporting because that's our understanding of it. These are are pretty clear rules and attorneys, especially government attorneys, have extra obligations. You mentioned the shutdown. Where do we go from here? Are we to understand the Democrats are not going to give in? And if they don't give in, then how long are we bracing for a shutdown?

14:43And what do you think you're achieving? Well, this is week four of the Trump shutdown, and we've been clear that we want to reopen the government. We want to find a bipartisan path forward to enacting a spending agreement. But that spending agreement actually has to make life better for the American people. And at the same time, we have to decisively address the Republican health care crisis that is crushing people all across the country, including working class America, rural America, urban America, small town America, the heartland of America and black and brown communities all throughout the United States of America.

15:15It's a real time crisis, as Marjorie Taylor Greene herself has acknowledged. And so we're going to continue to hold the line. I'm thankful for the courage and the principled strength that has been shown by my colleagues on the other side of the Capitol, Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats. We're in this fight until we win this fight on behalf of the American people. What do you see in the No Kings protests out there? And is it broadly aligned with the Democratic agenda? Do you view it as potentially independent, but but concerned about autocracy? And how are you trying to meet that energy? Well, the protests were peaceful, they were patriotic, and they were powerful.

15:58And another indication that the American people are not standing for the type of extremism that we've consistently seen be unleashed on the American people by Donald Trump and his administration from day one. All of the promises that they made about doing things like lowering the high cost of living have been broken. And what we've seen from this administration is implementation of their Toxic Project 2025 agenda, which they lied about all of last year. And it's extraordinary to see more than 7 million people show up across the country, consistent with the best of what America has to offer in terms of pushing back peacefully, but aggressively against an out of control administration, which is the case right now.

16:48And it will make a difference as we continue to march forward toward accountability. We'll see some of that accountability two weeks from today on November 4th in New Jersey, I believe, in Virginia. And in terms of Prop 50 in California, where we are working hard to stop Trump from stealing the midterm elections by engaging in this aggressive gerrymandering. And that accountability will continue as we move forward beyond this upcoming election. Mm hmm. Leader Jeffries, another difficult topic that weighs on a lot of of our leaders are these threats of violence. In this instance, as you well know, there was a individual who'd been convicted of storming the Capitol here and they had threatened you.

17:30I have a headline, pardoned Capitol riot or charged with threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries at a New York City event this week. The complication here, I've heard you and others condemn all, of course, political violence here. you would be a potential target. But should this person be out of federal prison in the first place? That would seem a relevant safety consideration, given that the president did choose to pardon them. Yeah, the real problem that the country confronts, and I'm thankful for local, state, and federal law enforcement in terms of identifying the immediacy of this threat and taking decisive action.

18:07But the American people across the country are under threat because Donald Trump made the decision to pardon hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers on January 6th and have now been unleashed in communities all across the country. And we've seen multiple instances of these January 6th rioters having engaged in re-offending, having engaged in violent crimes and other things that are jeopardizing the safety of the American people. That's the big problem that we confront right now. and, you know, we just need a handful of Republicans to actually raise their voices and make clear that this is problematic.

18:49But of course, they can't do it. When Donald Trump says jump, they just respond how high. I'm jumping around because your time is limited. We are told that with a new member sworn in, you would get to a vote on the Epstein files. Can you tell us the status of that and what would the American people potentially learn? Your representative-elect Adelita Grijalva was elected by the people of Arizona four weeks ago today. And it remains the case that Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans have continued to prevent her from being sworn in. Why? We believe it's because she will be the 218th signature on a discharge petition that will force an up or down vote on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

19:38And that legislation will pass. And House Republicans and Donald Trump clearly want no part of that type of transparency and accountability. They don't want that information. Can you say if we'll learn much? I mean, it's a tricky one because you don't know what they have or are hiding. So do you view it as the right thing to do in theory or you're under the view based on what you know that there's more information there to come out? Well, it's either one or two things that are true. Either Donald Trump and the extremists spent years lying to their own base about what was in the Epstein files, fanning the flames of a conspiracy theory that people were being protected.

20:18or it is in fact the case that the files are very damning in terms of what's in them. That's probably more likely than not the scenario that we'll confront. And that's why they're doing everything they can to hide them, including by unlawfully preventing Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva from being sworn in. But we're going to stay on the case. She is going to get sworn in and we're going to see these files released and accountability brought to any of the wrongdoers. who are in that file. I know your time is short. I appreciate you coming on the beat here with a lot going on. Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries on several topics.

20:55Thank you, sir. Thank you. Appreciate it. We have a lot more coming up by the end of the hour. We will hear from Neil deGrasse Tyson himself back on the beat as we make sense of everything from science to technology today. But right now we are going to turn to the warnings about Trump's use of the military. How far can he go? I have a special item for you that is relevant to those warning about what he's going to do. I'm going to show you where he came from on this. And we're back in 90 seconds.

21:30At DSW, we ask the important questions, like what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an RSVP. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with Designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or DSW.com today and let us surprise you. How does America stay so beautiful at 250 years old? By getting its Beautyrest. This year, enjoy huge savings at the Beautyrest July 4th sales event. Save up to$1 ,000 on Beautyrest black mattresses and adjustable base sets featuring pocketed coil technology for our most advanced motion separation.

22:20Limited time offer. Visit a Beautyrest retailer today. People at their best get their Beautyrest. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer because of the way it promotes growth. Some say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk, scaling with you while being magically affordable. And some say Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting, and more are like building blocks for creating a custom software suite. But I say Odoo is all of it. Fertilizer Magic Beanstalk building blocks for business. Yeah, Odoo, exactly what every business needs. Sign up at Odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

23:00In this second term, President Trump is clearly testing and sometimes seizing military powers to see how far he can go. and lawmakers in democratic cities are sounding the alarm. There are the attempts to use or misuse the National Guard to deploy troops like you see here, to avoid the local checks and balances, to misuse the statutory references to rebellion that give wartime powers over some of these troops. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker even went this far with this stark warning. I think it's not very far away from him offering and providing military to protect the polling places across America, but particularly in blue states and blue cities, with the idea that they could confiscate the ballot boxes if they think there is fraud in the election.

23:56That's a very serious charge, Pritzker talking about future elections, and discussing the idea of what we've seen in other countries, that the military could be pulled into attempts to interfere in the election, or who has the ballots. That's not a good thing, and that could sound like a coup. And some might say, well, there go the Democrats with these alarmist claims about the future rather than the present. But when you look at what Trump is doing with the military and a claim like that, we can actually stack it against other times where Trump was still in charge and dealing with an election he lost.

24:37So that doesn't apply to last November when the incumbent party was Democratic and Trump did lawfully win the November election. But what about 2020? When you look at the many ways that Donald Trump tried to overthrow the election he lost, you will see one of the arrows we've charted before for you, and you might have forgotten about it. The military seizing voting machines was a plot that you see there around December that was short. It was aborted, abandoned, shut down because it was so illegal at the time that Trump's most loyal aides didn't want to go forward with it, hence the shortest arrow.

25:13But there was, remember, a Trump executive order that was at least drafted, a written plot that wanted to make the Secretary of Defense seize, collect, retain, and analyze certain voting machines and that they would put in a Trump special counsel pick who was actually a Trump attorney who got in a lot of legal trouble later, Sidney Powell, who would, in this very odd coup-like plot of mid-December, she would somehow, they thought, tell the military how to go and take the ballots, which again sounds like a coup. In fairness, this did not happen, but let me remind you why. Rudy Giuliani, who didn't see a lot of things he wasn't willing to try for Trump, warned at the time if they did that and tried to send troops in to steal the ballots, quote, we'd all end up in prison.

26:04His then attorney general, as well as other attorneys, balked at what was essentially the makings of a request to conduct a MAGA military coup plot. the president said something like, well, we could get to the bottom. Some people say we could get to the bottom of this if the department sees the machines. I said, absolutely not. That's not how we do things in the United States. There's no legal authority to do that. What they were proposing, I thought was nuts. I don't understand why we even have to tell you why that's. Those are top Trump officials at the time who served at the time, all going against it because we don't do military coups in America.

26:52But when we hear today warnings about what Trump might do in the next one or two elections, we already have in writing and with those witnesses all around him what he tried to do. And later, as more information came out, the Times reported in 2022, Trump was more directly involved in that plot than people initially thought. He pushed the plans through several channels. They kept hitting walls because even the most loyal people said coups are illegal, and you can't use the military that way. So when we hear these warnings today, sometimes from governors and lawmakers who are involved, other times from our experts, understand we are not hearing mere speculation.

27:30We are hearing something rooted in the real history of what Trump tried to do back when there were more people around him saying no. Today, he has installed a heck of a lot more people who will say yes, even after other lawyers and otherwise MAGA loyalists have said they'll do anything for him, but end democracy or break the DOJ, and he finds the people who will. So, what do we do with a problem like this when there are fewer people saying no? Former Prosecutor Joyce Vance, on that question and more when we come back.