Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent became so engrossed Wednesday in providing non-answers about the president’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that he accidentally dodged a question about his own employment.
Bessent’s appearance before the Senate Finance Committee was nothing short of contentious. It was his first time speaking before the committee since Trump settled his fragile $10 billion lawsuit over the 2019-2020 leak of his tax returns with his own administration, and created an enormous DOJ-backed slush fund out of its ashes. Yet the secretary was not so keen to provide answers regarding the honey pot, or the myriad legal allowances—such as future audit immunity—that have been afforded to Trump as a result.
Instead, Bessent spent a significant chunk of his time before the committee skirting and dodging critical questions about the fund, claiming that he could not comment on any component of the proposal due to “ongoing litigation” while deferring questions to the Justice Department.
But in one particularly heated exchange with Texas Senator Ben Ray Luján, Bessent’s default answer became so routine that he failed to notice when he was asked a question about his own job that he very much could answer.
“Are you the secretary of Treasury?” asked Luján.
But Bessent was silent.
“Yes, is the answer,” Luján responded, incredulous.
“Mr. Secretary, Scott—are you the secretary of Treasury for the United States government?” asked Luján again.
“Yes,” Bessent said.
“Appreciate that. The Department of Justice represents the IRS and the Department of Treasury in this lawsuit. Correct?” continued Luján.
“Correct,” said Bessent.
“You’re telling me that the DOJ gave the president this—without you knowing about it?” Luján asked, raising a piece of paper that assumedly related to the Treasury’s joint agreement with the DOJ over the settled suit. “That’s not how the law works.”
Lujan loses patience with Bessent’s refusal to answer questions
LUJAN: Are you the Secretary of Treasury?
BESSENT: …
LUJAN: Yes is the answer. Scott, are you the Secretary of Treasury? pic.twitter.com/WsEv9E8B6T
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 3, 2026
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, the committee’s ranking member, derided the DOJ agreement as “an abuse of the IRS that goes way beyond anything we’ve seen in the past.”
Whether or not the slush fund is still alive is currently in doubt. Bessent told the Senate Finance Committee earlier Wednesday that the federal financial department intended to comply with a DOJ directive to shutter the fund. The evening before, during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the fund was dead in the water and that his agency would not “ever” move forward with the payments.
But Trump has since defied both of them, standing by the far-right reparations effort while speaking with the New York Post Wednesday morning.