Trump Treasury Secretary Flails When Grilled About Slush Fund

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gracelessly dodged questions about the $1.8 billion slush fund the Department of Justice awarded to the president and his allies.

During a White House press briefing Thursday, a reporter asked Bessent to comment on the process for developing the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” set up as part of a settlement for Donald Trump’s failing lawsuit against the IRS.

Surprise, surprise: Bessent’s response did not mention the fund at all.

“This is going to be the only question I take on this matter today. So, there’s ongoing litigation, so it’d be inappropriate for me to comment,” Bessent said. “President Trump is a great American who has endured more than 10 years—10 years—of nonstop harassment and weaponization from federal and state government actors. A bad actor at the IRS leaked more than 400,000 tax returns, including the Trump family, all the employees, and that’s how we got here now.

“No American should be targeted for political reasons, and every citizen deserves fair treatment and the full protection of the law. The Department of Justice represented the Treasury and the IRS in this matter, and I’m going to have to refer any questions to active Attorney General Todd Blanche.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins also pressed the secretary on the sudden exit of Brian Morrissey, the Treasury’s top legal officer, following the announcement of the fund—but Bessent wouldn’t bite.

“I will not be taking any other questions, I will not be taking any other questions,” he repeated. Maybe he should add that to his list of pathetic affirmations?

It appears that Bessent is intent on allowing Trump to pillage the Treasury and award his worst allies with taxpayer dollars—without owing taxpayers any answers. This lack of transparency is par for the course, but Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund is a criminal enterprise so egregious that it manages to stand out in a presidency that was already blatantly corrupt.

The son of conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito seems to have gotten a nice job in the Treasury Department.

Philip Alito has been working in the department’s office of the general counsel since early last year, NOTUS reports, raising questions of conflicts of interest as the court hears cases concerning the Treasury, including President Trump’s deal to avoid tax audits of himself and his family, as well as his $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Alito’s office provides legal and policy advice to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and his employment seems to have been deliberately kept secret. Alito doesn’t have a public résumé or a LinkedIn account, and he isn’t mentioned anywhere on the Treasury Department’s website. His three professional bar listings have incorrect information regarding his previous employers and appear to be out of date, according to NOTUS.

An unnamed former official said that when Alito was hired in early 2025, he didn’t have an exact role and seemed to have been hired because the Trump administration wanted loyal employees across the federal government.

“Everybody knew who he was. I think it’s fair to say he kept a pretty low profile. I kind of had the impression that he was kind of a little bit sheepish about his celebrity affiliation. You’d go into a meeting and if people were introducing themselves by first and last name, he’d just say ‘Phil,’ not Phil Alito. He’s a pretty soft-spoken guy,” the official told NOTUS.

Another former official told the publication that Alito became an attorney-adviser, briefed on important department matters and able to offer legal advice.

“There’s no doubt he got that position because of who he is,” this official said. “[Advisers] are in all the meetings, so they knew all the issues across the board.”

Alito was on the job when other important cases concerning his department, such as challenges to Trump’s emergency tariffs, went before the high court, and his father never recused himself. With Trump’s anti-weaponization fund and his IRS settlement blocking audits of his taxes facing legal challenges, that is almost certain to happen again.

A spokesperson told NOTUS that “Philip Alito is currently detailed from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia as a Counselor in the Office of the General Counsel, and his portfolio covers a broad range of topics. As a matter of both professional and personal judgment, Phil does not counsel on any matters reasonably expected before the Supreme Court. Like all attorneys in the Office of the General Counsel, Phil is in compliance with all applicable ethical obligations.”

However, the department didn’t answer NOTUS’s questions on when Alito started at the agency, what his specific duties were, or whether he filed an ethics disclosure form. It seems that in the Trump administration, questions of ethics are easily ignored.

Employers and institutions have so far paid out a cumulative $2 million in legal settlements to people who were fired or penalized over their online reactions to Charlie Kirk’s death.

Kirk—a longtime right-wing activist who played a critical role in translating the MAGA agenda to America’s college-age youth—was assassinated in September. His death proved as polarizing as his life’s work: Millions of people reacted, some with shock and rage, and some with apparent glee.

An estimated 600 people were either penalized or let go from their places of employment, a punishment for their publicized opinions on the right-winger’s untimely demise.

The consequences were hailed by the Trump administration. In an honorary postmortem episode of Kirk’s podcast hosted by Vice President JD Vance, the number two Republican encouraged listeners to call the employers of anyone “celebrating Charlie’s murder.” Former Attorney General Pam Bondi likened the anti-Kirk posts to hate speech, and said at the time that the Justice Department would “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Legal experts fretted that the governmental response had set a dangerous precedent. Yet the settlements have proven to be a major win for freedom of speech.

One of the largest settlement recipients was a retired Tennessee cop, Larry Bushart, who was jailed for more than a month after he posted a meme related to Kirk’s assassination. Bushart settled an “unlawful incarceration” lawsuit for $835,000 last week.

“I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,” Bushart said in a statement last week. “The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy.”

Biologist Brittney Brown settled last week with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for $485,000 after she was fired for similar causes, also involving a Kirk-related meme on her Instagram account. In a statement, Brown claimed that all she wanted was her job back.

Suzanne Swierc made a comment about Kirk on her private Facebook page. But a screenshot of her post, taken and shared by someone else, ultimately cost Swierc her job at Ball State University. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the college on Swierc’s behalf. They settled on Tuesday, with Ball State University agreeing to pay $225,000.

“Suzanne was speaking as a private citizen on a matter of public concern when Ball State fired her over a private social media post,” Stevie Pactor, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Indiana, said in a statement. “The First Amendment does not allow government institutions to retaliate in those circumstances, and this settlement reflects that.”

Many more such lawsuits could be on the horizon. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has recorded at least 14 First Amendment lawsuits in federal court over wrongful termination related to comments made about Kirk’s death. That tally does not include those brought by workers terminated in the private sector, or for employees who filed in state court, reported Axios Thursday.

CBS head Bari Weiss is bringing in former New York Times technology columnist Nick Bilton to lead 60 Minutes after months of internal controversy.

Weiss announced Bilton as executive producer of the longtime evening segment on Thursday, replacing former executive producer Tanya Simon. While Bilton has produced documentaries, he has zero broadcast news experience.

“I’m here to lead this show, not preserve it under glass. That means honoring what works and being honest about what doesn’t. I have a notebook full of ideas. Some are about the show itself. Some are about the next generation of correspondents,” Bilton wrote in his introductory letter to staff. “Some are about the strange fact that we produce one extraordinary hour for one night a week in a world that consumes content around the clock. I’m excited to share them.”

Also on Thursday, CBS officially fired Sharyn Alfonsi, who warned a day earlier that the move was due to her protesting Weiss’s pulling of her story on El Salvador’s CECOT megaprison. The network additionally cut ties with 60 Minutes executive editor Draggan Mihailovich and correspondent Cecilia Vega.

“It sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom,” Alfonsi told The New York Times on Wednesday of her own contract being terminated. “I think it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting.”

President Trump visited soldiers Tuesday at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, but chose not to meet with 14 who were injured in the war in Iran.

CBS reports that Trump made time to meet service members while he was at the medical center for his six-month physical, but did not meet any of the ones who were recovering from the recent war, and the White House refused to discuss the matter.

“President Trump was honored to meet with our amazing service members and medical staff while at Walter Reed Medical Center,” a White House spokesperson said.

In a speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, Trump mentioned the 13 soldiers who have died during the Iran war, calling them “wonderful souls” who “gave their lives” to ensure that Iran would not get a nuclear weapon. On Wednesday, he again said those 13 were “great people” and that losing them “is a terrible thing.”

“We want to lose very few, we want very few to be injured. We’re very careful, but war is war. War is dangerous,” Trump said.

When it comes to living, wounded soldiers, Trump doesn’t have a good track record. While trying to plan a big military parade in his first term, Trump said to his chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn’t look good for me.”

In 2019, at a welcome ceremony for Gen. Mark Milley being named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump was upset that an Army captain severely wounded in action in Afghanistan, Luis Avila, was brought to sing “God Bless America.” After Avila sang, Trump congratulated him, but afterward he told Milley, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

The Justice Department is trying to obtain the names, addresses, financial data, and other personal information of Reddit and X users who criticize ICE’s violent immigration tactics.

Bloomberg reported that U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro has subpoenaed the massive social media platforms for the information of two anonymous users who made negative comments toward ICE. They are now part of a criminal investigation, even as Pirro’s office has yet to alert them of the charges. Attorneys for the users believe the investigations could be focused on officer endangerment regarding revealing the location of an ICE agent but dispute that their clients committed any crimes.

This is a clear attempt at intimidation of dissent and muzzling free speech, and it isn’t the first time. In February, the Department of Homeland Security sent out dozens of subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), demanding they divulge the personal information of users who have criticized or helped locate ICE agents.

The Trump administration is paying close attention to every Reddit thread and Instagram comment that opposes its massively unpopular deportation units—and is trying to take legal action against them. This insecure authoritarianism is a real low, even for this administration, especially as Trump moves to pay his own supporters who actually committed real crimes from a $1.8 billion slush fund.

The Trump administration has doubled down on Donald Trump’s threats against Oman.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Thursday that Washington “will not tolerate any effort to impose a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz.”

“Oman, in particular, should know the U.S. Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved—directly or indirectly—in facilitating tolls for the strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” Bessent wrote in a statement posted to X.

“All nations should reject outright any efforts by Iran to disrupt the free flow of commerce,” he continued. “Tehran’s days of terrorizing the region and the world are over.”

Trump shocked attendees of a Cabinet meeting Wednesday when he casually threatened Oman, promising to blow the country up if it tried to take control of the strait, which Oman borders.

“It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ’em up,” Trump said. “They understand that, they’ll be fine.”

The president insisted that “nobody” would control the Strait of Hormuz, and that the U.S. would instead “watch over” the passage.

But Bessent’s toll ban would actually undermine Trump’s plan to make a buck off the vital trade route: The president pitched the idea of imposing a toll on ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz back in April, although it was not immediately clear how the U.S. would obtain control of the foreign waterway, let alone toll it.

Approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments funnel through the strait, which is situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Most of that oil is moved toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Nonetheless, the shuttered strait has caused a crisis of global proportions. The average cost of gas in the U.S. is $4.42 per gallon, with large swaths of the country pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started. Costs have also gone up for the rest of the world, a reality that has only aggravated U.S. alliances.

President Trump on Tuesday again refiled a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over a July 2025 report that he submitted a letter and explicit drawing to a birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit last month, ruling he couldn’t claim the paper published the story with actual malice. Then Trump refiled and ran into another stumbling block on May 13, when U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that he couldn’t use the discovery process in his claims that the newspaper defamed him. In the new lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the Journal’s reporters tried to “falsely pass off as fact that President Trump, in 2003, wrote, drew, and signed this letter” but “failed to show proof.”

Trump’s reasoning for the lawsuit is hollow, especially considering that the House Oversight Committee included the birthday book, complete with the drawing from Trump, in a September release of Epstein materials from his estate. It’s more likely that Trump is trying to shake down the Journal for a big settlement and intimidate its owners, the Murdoch family, into favorable coverage.

It’s a pattern that Trump has followed against other media companies, which ended up forking over money that supposedly is going to Trump’s presidential library. Trump also has pending defamation lawsuits against The New York Times for $15 billion and the BBC for $10 billion. It seems that he won’t stop until he’s made them pay for reporting that he doesn’t like.

The Trump administration is giving Venezuela’s new leadership a free pass.

The White House has instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid criminal investigations into acting President Delcy Rodríguez, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Rodríguez has been on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar since at least 2018, and has been tied to all sorts of criminal activity ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. But all of that is apparently being brushed under the rug, as the Trump administration shows blatant favoritism toward the leader it installed earlier this year.

It is not clear if prosecutors were working toward charging Rodríguez with a crime. A Justice Department spokesperson told the AP in an email that “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.”

U.S. officials told the AP that the directive was intended to ease Rodríguez’s transition into power in Venezuela, and to avoid further destabilizing the oil-rich nation.

Donald Trump ordered U.S. forces to invade Venezuela in early January, sending hundreds of troops through its capital city, Caracas, to capture the country’s 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro and his wife were transported to New York to face federal narcotics charges, to which they both have pleaded not guilty.

Trump failed to notify Congress before doing so, but he didn’t forget to tip off his friends at America’s biggest oil companies, which stand to gain the most from America’s newfound control over Venezuela’s oil supply—the largest in the world.

Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, was the major political benefactor of his sudden abduction. Despite her criminal affiliations, the Trump administration has opened the door for her to do business with the U.S., lifting sanctions (that were placed during Trump’s first term after she undermined Venezuelan democracy by supporting Maduro’s authoritarian rule) and allowing her to reestablish ties with U.S. banks, according to the Associated Press.

Beyond that, Trump has uplifted her name in an effort to sanitize her character, describing her as a “terrific person.”

Katie Miller doxed the Democrats’ social media manager after the party’s official account called her husband an “ugly fuck” following his transphobic comments towards Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

“The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate,” Miller wrote Wednesday over a post of Talarico, a baseless and nonsensical insult. Talarico is not trans, but has expressed support.

“Shut up you ugly fuck,” the Democrats responded, easily ratioing Miller’s original post.

That harsh, scary language got his wife, Katie Miller posting in his defense.

“Paulina Mangubat is who runs @TheDemocrats account. She’s 30, unmarried with no kids. Put your name on it next time,” Miller wrote, posting a picture of Mangubat. “This is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like. It’s why Pew reports 50% of them have been diagnosed with a mental condition.”

For what it’s worth, Miller’s post is pure projection. In the single picture she posted Mangubat looks nice, put together, and professional—much better than her husband who started this entire exchange in the first place.

Miller then went on Fox News to talk about how saying “ugly fuck” on X to her husband is the kind of behavior that led to the multiple failed assassination attempts on Donald Trump, even calling it “violent”—a ridiculous argument given Trump’s own violent rhetoric. Meanwhile, her husband is part of an administration that has shot and killed American citizens in the street. They know very well what real violence is. And what’s lost here is that this is all part of a last-gasp GOP attempt to slander Talarico because they’re afraid he’ll beat their boy Ken Paxton in the midterms.

For her part, Mangubat responded in good nature to Miller’s deranged post.

“Well, now seems like a good time to share that I’m getting married! We just put down the deposit on the venue and bought my dress lol,” she wrote. “I didn’t end up picking this one but I thought it looked nice.”