Trump Tests Law by Claiming $1B+ for Convicts

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0:50Ty Cobb:Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melburn. We begin with some real developments in Congress that show there are still limits and rules that facts and exposure matter. The thug fund we've been reporting on is not only likely unconstitutional and illegal. It is not only the most anti-police, soft on crime initiative we've ever seen come out of any modern DOJ under Trump's tutelage. It also now, partly for those reasons, is causing a giant rift among Republicans, one that they can't hide and that's spilled into public view late today. The DOJ, I should say, has, of course, failed to find any rational way to defend or explain the fund, which means even Republicans who go along with so much of what Donald Trump wants are balking today.

1:35Ty Cobb:They could not get lawmakers on board with the thug fund, which would go to thugs and other people convicted of crimes, potentially January 6th, violent offenders. The acting AG for Trump didn't rule that out. And Blanche today tried to hold a meeting that was described as very contentious. This was just with Republicans. So you've got Trump Republicans and Trump's Republican acting AG, and yet he couldn't find a good audience there, reportedly struggling to address their concerns. One source saying he just wasn't persuasive to the room, and that meant something real then happened. Senators abandoned any plans to go forward with something that was supposed to help Trump today, an immigration vote.

2:17Ty Cobb:The Times reports how just that delay shows the toxic dynamic between the White House and the Republican Congress as they head into the midterms. this is the first step in what could be a road to another public embarrassment and rejection for Donald Trump. Politically, that'd be bad for Trump, just like when Republicans found that they were going to overthrow and revolt against him on Epstein. Substantively, it would be good for democracy and the rule of law if this likely illegal plan was stopped in its tracks. Indeed, Andrew Weissman was telling us just last night on this program that while there are many ways to challenge this in court.

2:55Ty Cobb:Everybody knows that takes a long time. And a quicker way to challenge it would be to have Congress step up and say the obvious. They didn't appropriate this. They wouldn't. And go on record against, meaning use the legal powers they have to ban under law, taking taxpayer dollars and handing it out to this secret thug fund. Republicans, some of them, have been speaking out. I think it's stupid on stilts. Someone who assaulted a police officer admitted their guilt, and now we're going to pay them for that? I don't think it's an appropriate use of money. What are your thoughts about this organization fund from the president?

3:35Yeah, not a big fan.

3:39Ty Cobb:Republicans stepping up, and not just a few random ones. That was the Senate majority leader saying, not a big fan. If you follow this program, I told you a couple days ago, when Thune says something like that, it opens up space, oxygen for others to speak up. And that's part of how pushback works, because he says he's not a fan. That wasn't the strongest way to put it. And others say this is stupid, like you heard Tillis there, other Republicans saying they'll kill it. And eventually Thune and others can say back to the White House, hey, you unveiled this without any prep. You didn't consult us.

4:12Ty Cobb:You floated it in the worst possible way. You admitted under the acting AG it might go to violent criminals who attacked Congress where, of course, they work. And now we have a revolt that is too big. Too many people oppose it. And that allows him to sort of tell Trump that it's going to be DOA. There's a bipartisan effort underway to kill the fund entirely. They're drafting legislation. All of this is fast moving. House Democrats say they will be investigating any effort to dole out these funds if they take back the House in these midterms. But the actual process is going forward. As of this moment, the fund hasn't handed out money that we know of, but allies of Trump are filing claims.

4:52Ty Cobb:And it's kind of a who's who of people that American taxpayers don't want to give their money to for no reason. People like George Santos, the lying Republican, Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who was later embraced by Trump, and some of those convicted Jan 6th attackers, as mentioned. Payouts could include others, including those politically allied with the administration. Blanche, as I said, will not rule out paying violent convicts. Here was one exchange. The claimant would have to say, I assaulted a cop and I want money. So whether the commissioners will give that person money, that claimant, it's up to them.

5:34But that's one of the factors they have to consider. Would you be okay with people who were convicted of hurting police getting taxpayer money? Just to be clear, people that hurt police get money all the time.

5:49Ty Cobb:just an embarrassing ridiculous anti-police sentiment from the acting attorney general mr blanche is unable to say that the doj he leads won't rule out giving your money to people who attacked police and were convicted of it taking your money which they don't really have a basis for and giving that over to people who attack police and the reason because Trump settled a lawsuit with himself? None of it adds up. Mr. Blanche, like other people who've tried to impress Donald Trump, may find that his little bit here doesn't work out for him, even by the narrow standards of his career, because he's now on record as being anti-police, which frankly disqualifies him from the job he holds and any future job in government, law enforcement, prosecution, or government service.

6:34Ty Cobb:Remember, it's police and federal agents, who are basically federal police, that work alongside the DOJ, and he's selling them all out. and he's opening up the opportunity to fund violent attacks against them. So he's not going to have good working relations with any of them that find out about this. And yet in the end, if the fund is killed within the next few weeks, he'll have debased himself in that way in public and gotten what for it? They won't even have a fund to hand out. So if it reminds you of other people, Michael Cohen and others who've worked for Trump only to find that the loyalty is one way, well, we're watching that in real time.

7:08Ty Cobb:Blanche is trying to be politically loyal to Trump. over his oath to the Constitution and to supporting the police and the federal agents that protect him and work alongside DOJ. One Times writer says this is a mountain of corruption, that the U.S. under Trump has now reached a place we've never been before. Another columnist likens this to the mob boss's petty theft, given that the sums may not actually matter that much to Trump. But as we've covered, what he wants is to rebuild an insurrection force from Jan 6 last time, with pardons, legal protections, blanket future pardons, and money for his shock troops should he want to call on them.

7:49Ty Cobb:The Times also notes the fund violates a policy directive issued by this very administration last year that bars payments to groups not involved in an underlying lawsuit. If you've watched our coverage, I will repeat what I've said before. This is not about an underlying lawsuit. It's not about the IRS. It's not about any of the cover stories, distraction, propaganda language and routine lies that come out of Donald Trump's operation and now include the acting attorney general. This is about funding people who attack police in Congress because Donald Trump, having once claimed that he opposed that and they would actually pay for it, he claimed, actually has shown through action, legal and now financial, that that's his team.

8:33Ty Cobb:The anti-America team, the anti-democracy team, the anti-Congress team. That's his team. I'm joined now by Ty Cobb, former White House attorney during the first Trump administration. And Ty, I mentioned what Trump claimed on January 7th because there was so much pressure at the time and he was facing an impeachment that might have resulted in disqualifying him from running again and potential indictment as well. I want to show the violence and what he said.

9:12Ty Cobb:Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem. To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay. How does that stack up to what he's doing now? Well, I think he's changed his tune in saying, you know, to those who engaged in lawlessness and violence, welcome to the slush fund. Each of you should get two million dollars or more, as Theriault has indicated he's going to seek. So that was at a time, remember, when even Mitch McConnell and Nancy Mace were raising objections to the failure to allow the peaceful transfer of government and the obvious insurrection that was underway.

10:04He had to quell those passions in an effort to avoid impeachment. And sadly now, what we're seeing is, you know, an audacity and a scale of corruption that never been seen before in America, unknown to many people other than Putin's, Idi Amin's and others of the world who have looted their countries for their own personal benefit. And that's what's going on now between Trump and Blanche. Yeah.

10:35Ty Cobb:And your view of the way the acting attorney general Blanche is leading this? Criminal. Hmm. Because? Well, it's totally lawless. He's no idiot. And Blanche doesn't have the excuse of having been an ideologue like Bondi or Stephen Miller or others. Blanche was once a decent lawyer. This is all basically just personal ambition, enriching himself and trying to empower himself. And he found out, I think, that Trump believes the price of making him attorney general is$2 billion, and he readily handed it out to him. The reporting we have out of Capitol Hill today does show more opposition to this than usual, than some other Trump efforts, including the so-called enemies list, which targeted all these people.

11:32Ty Cobb:And so given that you've been in that in that White House role as a lawyer where you keep an eye on the Congress and other pushback, how do you think that plays? Do you think it's hit the type of pitch yet where the practical people at the White House and DOJ say, oh, we might actually lose this thing? Or what's your view of it? Well, I think the mere fact that Blanche canceled his trip to Minnesota to rush up to the Hill and expanded the list of potential claimants under this slush fund to include Republican senators whose phone records, not actual conversations, not anything private or otherwise not appropriately subpoenaed, was subpoenaed during the 1-6 investigation to determine merely to whom Trump and Meadows were speaking as the insurrection was well underway, now they're going to be allowed to dip into the fund along with the Proud Boys and the many other right-wing and dangerous people that Trump wants to take care of to make sure that they'll always be there for him, particularly on election day in November.

12:45Yeah.

12:46Ty Cobb:And we reported this week that the wider process is Trump trying to rebuild and extend some of the failed efforts from the original insurrection. He ran into pushback famously from his vice president, the AG, and now, as we've just discussed, he's got different people in those roles. I want to contrast on at least the issue of the facts of the election, Bill Barr, to the sycophants surrounding him today. This is what we had from Barr before. I repeatedly told the president in no uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud. I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bold.

13:38Today, a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned an indictment against James Comey on two counts. I love working for President Trump. I love you, sir.

13:50Ty Cobb:If there is a Republican loss in 28, say Vance or someone allied with Trump, and Trump is demanding Blanche do the things that Barr wouldn't, how concerned should we be that he would go further? And what, as a society, do we do about that? If the attorney general is going to give away$2 billion worth of taxpayer money, I think we should be very concerned. There's no bar to what he will stoop to in service of the president to whom he has surrendered his fealty, unlike other attorney generals whose fealty was always to the Constitution. Yeah, right. And that sort of takes it forward into everyone understanding what we're dealing with.

14:33Ty Cobb:In the old days, the media gives some deference to what comes out of the DOJ. The Wall Street business elites who matter say, oh, well, if the DOJ said this, it means that. And now that seems upside down. Ty, you've agreed to stay. We've got our shortest break. We're back with more in 90 seconds. Parents, have you heard your kids say, I'm not a math kid? Well, with Mathnasium, every kid can be a math kid. They customize their math instructions so kids who are struggling are able to catch up and get ahead. And advanced kids are challenged to reach higher. Mathnasium makes math fun, so kids learn to love it.

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16:24There's no architectural plans. There is no environmentals. There's no engineering. There's no sense of, when we ask, how did it happen to cost exactly a billion? I don't support taxpayer money going to it. It could cost a lot less. It could cost a lot more. I just don't get it.

16:47Ty Cobb:The sound you hear is a Republican pushing back on the panoply of Trump plots and efforts to spend money. We're back with White House veteran Ty Cobb. Ty, as you know, nowadays people sound off in all sorts of different ways. And one interesting thing with TikTok is people are just venting. It's not like an op-ed that went through an editor in five drafts. People are just sounding off and more and more Americans have heard about and seem concerned with the various corruption and spending. Take a look. 1.7 billion taxpayer dollars. This man is literally trying to swindle. The way he did it is even more corrupt than the fund itself.

17:24The blatant end run around the Constitution. This is going on while they started an endless war in Iran, while they can't supply health care. But they have money to line this reflecting pool. He's so focused on the ballroom. Maybe he should have just gone to interior design school. Oh, what a big boy playing with his toys.

17:44Ty Cobb:Donald Trump's arch that he's trying to put in D.C. is a 250-foot middle finger to veterans. Your view of sort of where the public outrage fits into what is a lot of corruption and spending problems. It's shocking. I mean, we've never in our lifetimes or in the history of the republic seen a level of corruption at this audacious scale. The people that are now paying attention, I think that's great. I hope he's finally crossed a line that even Congress may push back on, and more Republicans will find a spine or some character and do what they swore to do when they took their oaths. But I don't think we can count on that, Keep in mind, after the 1-6 insurrection, Republicans were initially upset, but they got over that, embraced Trump, and sadly, 77 million Americans, notwithstanding Trump's attempted seditious, treasonous exercise, voted him back into office.

18:52So I don't think anybody should be surprised that a convicted criminal of his ilk and lack of character, his malignant narcissism and dementia is running amok with no impulse control and many people who are ambitious trying to serve him. I think it's good that people are starting to pay attention. Everybody should pay attention. The republic is in severe danger and all our taxpayer money is at risk. If he can take$2 billion under this pretext, he can take as much as he wants, and he will. Yeah.

19:27Ty Cobb:Right. And there's different ways to mount these arguments. And when people get exhausted or cynical, they say, well, what does it even matter? But the fact that this fund is vulnerable to so many different points, that it's anti-police, that it's dangerous to democracy, that it undercuts the congressional funding prerogative, which some Republicans care about for narrower reasons, That seems to have added, you know, added weight on the boat, if you will. And Trump, you mentioned his his mental state. I mean, here he was in the Oval. He's not exactly pushing back on whether he controls Republicans.

19:59Ty Cobb:There was this exchange. There is some backlash among Senate Republicans to some of the other priorities. They've all ruined that anti-weaponization fund. Are you losing control of the Senate, Senate Republicans? I don't know. I really don't know. He doesn't know, and at times it seems like he doesn't care. The war is a very serious matter. The fund is something you might just evaporate under pressure, but what they have in common was no actual meaningful effort to present, even to his own party, let alone his constitutional obligations, to explain it to the public in advance. He doesn't seem to care about that or feel any compunction at times.

20:44Trump doesn't believe that he's accountable to anybody. He believes he can do anything he wants, and he does. As both the war, contrary to the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and this completely lawless exercise, you know, Blanche, Blanche, you know, can't avoid criticism here either because he violated virtually every ethical rule under rule one of the rules of professional conduct. He has no business doing this in a circumstance where his former client is the alleged adversary in a case where he's representing the Justice Department. Trump will fine people to do whatever he wants. And as we know from his termination of Bondi, as we know from his attacks on Senator Cassidy, he doesn't really care who he leaves in his wake.

21:36and temporary loyalists, unless they can get the job done, they're going to be trashed, just like Bondi was.

21:44Ty Cobb:Yeah. This is a time where we need clarity. We need a type of strength. Fortitude, Ty, you bring that here. I appreciate you making time for us on the beat, sir. Thank you, Ari. Always good to be with you. Yes. Thank you very much. White House veteran Ty Cobb has spent his time with us. I want to tell folks, if you're wondering, well, wait, what do the police think about what is obviously this anti-police effort. Well, we have a January 6th police officer who is suing Trump, joining me tonight on the beat. We think it's important to make time for that, and I hope you stay with us for that. As for Democrats seeking ways to do better in red states, how about hearing from one who is leading Mitch McConnell's red state and doing it well?

22:27Ty Cobb:We have that story coming up. And the rejection that Trump is seeing has broadened across the culture, including something new that actually unites Bruce Springsteen and Tucker Carlson.

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