In Georgia, during the early days of the pandemic, this Republican state senator named Brandon Beach showed up to the state capitol sick. A couple of days later, the senator disclosed that he’d tested positive for the coronavirus, sending his exposed colleagues into quarantine. “I’m not a bad person,” Beach, who is from New Orleans, and still speaks with a Louisianan accent, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, at the time. “I thought it was my regular sinus bronchitis stuff I get every year,” he added. Beach was in his fourth full term as a state legislator, representing an area north of Atlanta that includes Alpharetta, the well-off suburb where Marjorie Taylor Greene once ran a CrossFit gym. Prior to his 2013 election, Beach had worked as a city councilman, as C.E.O. of the local chamber of commerce, and as a member of the zoning and planning commission. In the Georgia Senate, he focussed his attention on metro Atlanta’s troubled transit system, pushed the failed cityhood movement of a wealthy north Atlanta enclave, worked to ban transgender women from playing in women’s sports, and championed doomed efforts to legalize casino gambling and sports betting in the state.
Some viewed Beach as “a ringmaster for unnecessary tax breaks,” as Julian Bene, a former board member of Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development authority, recently put it to me. “In particular, I think he took great glee in depriving Atlanta of tax revenues,” Bene went on. “And his reasoning was elementary-school level: when push came to shove, he’d say things, like, ‘Well, when I was opening a restaurant, everything costs more than I thought. So these people really need the tax break because this project’s going to cost them more than they think.’ He wanted taxpayers to subsidize this irresponsible nonsense.” After the 2020 election in Georgia, which Joe Biden won by some twelve thousand votes, a number of state Republicans, including Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, resisted election denialism. Beach bought into Stop the Steal whole hog. At one point, he made a public stand on behalf of a woman whose vote had been “compromised” and “diluted,” he said, by unproven election malfeasance. “We can’t just wait and think that things are going to get better at the next election,” Beach said at the time. “We need to take action.” He and other MAGA loyalists called for a special session to investigate the state’s election. They also pressured Vice-President Mike Pence to delay certification. “I believe if we can get a 10 to 12 day extension, we can blow this wide open,” Beach wrote to an ally. After the effort failed, Beach was kneecapped—stripped of a Senate committee chairmanship and challenged in his role as the executive director of the North Fulton Community Improvement District—until Donald Trump’s return to power.
In late March, Trump named Beach the next head of the U.S. Treasury, noting that the senator would help to “unleash America’s golden age.” His swearing-in is expected this month. After Trump’s announcement, Beach’s Republican colleagues in Georgia gave him a blazer with a gaudy hundred-dollar-bill pattern, which he donned with two thumbs-up as he addressed his fellow-senators. Beach’s new duties will include overseeing currency production and monitoring gold reserves at Fort Knox. He’ll advise Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, and offer input on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. His name will also appear on every dollar bill. “My name will be on the money,” Beach said. “It’s called Beach Bucks.” I spoke to Beach by phone recently, hours before he planned to meet with U.S. Mint officials. He cited his work on economic development in Alpharetta as qualifying him for the Treasury role. “I think there’s a direct correlation between infrastructure investment and economic development and jobs,” he said. “And one of the things that the President has tasked me with is to make sure we’re creating jobs and an economy that’s good.” I asked him about the gold situation at Fort Knox: Trump and Elon Musk have suggested lately that gold may be missing—a conspiracy with a long history. “When he called me and offered me the job,” Beach told me, referring to Trump, “he did say, ‘As soon as you get up here, we want you to go to Fort Knox and see if the gold is there.’ So we’re gonna do that.” I asked when. “I’m not sure,” Beach said. “I don’t know what’s going on overseas, but I know he’s going to be out of town for a week and then he’ll be back.” Beach went on about Trump. “He loves our country, he loves his family, he loves law enforcement and military—but he really loves capitalism. And he wants everybody to have economic opportunities if they’re willing to go out and work hard and put their head down. That’s what he wants. And that’s what we’re gonna do.” Bene was among those in Georgia who were dismayed by Beach’s elevation to the Treasury position. “You could pull almost anyone off the street who would be about as qualified to discuss how to manage the U.S. economy as a shill for developer tax breaks,” he told me. “It’s laughable.”
Before resigning from the state Senate, Beach did Trump a final favor in that role. He authored a bill, now awaiting the Governor’s signature, which would allow defendants to recoup legal fees and costs if the prosecutor is disqualified from the case for misconduct and the case is dismissed. Beach made it clear to me that he penned the bill with Trump in mind. Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, had attempted to prosecute Trump for interference in the 2020 election. But, last year, it was revealed that she was romantically involved with a lawyer on her team, and a judge disqualified her from the case. (Both denied wrongdoing, and she is appealing the ruling.) “She was on a witch hunt,” Beach told me. (At one point, Willis had targeted Beach in a so-called fake-electors scheme, but he was not ultimately charged.) “She misbehaved,” he continued. “I did it not only for President Trump but for the other defendants.” I noted that Trump’s legal costs, in this case, would ultimately be borne by the taxpayers of Fulton County. “Yep,” he replied. “And you know what? They should look at Fani Willis and take it out of her budget. She was reckless on that case and the Y.S.L. case,” a racketeering trial involving the rapper Young Thug, which I recently wrote about for the magazine. “She spent years on that case and got zero convictions.” (Willis did not obtain convictions on a number of charges, including attempted murder, but some defendants in the case, including Young Thug, did plead guilty to other charges.) A month before Beach’s Treasury appointment, a bronze medal commemorating law-enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol, on January 6th, inexplicably disappeared from the U.S. Treasury’s website, where it had been for sale. No explanation has since been offered. I asked Beach if he knew about that. “I do not,” he said. “I just got here. But I’m meeting with the Mint folks today at three o’clock, actually. I will ask about that.” As of Monday, Beach did not offer an answer.
