5️⃣ Trump Says Kim Answered Him, Then Can’t Say If They Spoke

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Kim Jong Un has responded to his request for a conversation. “Yeah, he has.” Asked whether the two had actually spoken, he said, “I don’t know.” On Sunday he ordered Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce the joint exercises with South Korea, citing “my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.” The grievance underneath came out in the same session: he called Seoul’s president for help against Iran and got “no thanks,” after asking $10 billion a year for the 39,000 American troops posted there. Seoul is running Ulchi Freedom Shield anyway. The Navy has already sailed the USS George Washington out of Yokosuka for the Middle East, leaving the western Pacific without a carrier.

4️⃣ Iran’s Guard Goes Offensive as the Deadline Dies

The sixty-day memorandum expired at 2:55 Tehran time. The Revolutionary Guard announced it is finished playing defense, promising “powerful offensive operations,” and its new commander vowed to bring “the most heavily-armed army in world history” to its knees. Trump spent the morning threatening to bomb Oman — the country mediating his deal — and the afternoon on the Strait of Hormuz: “We control it with the blockade... I like the idea of declaring it a territory.” Take Tehran at its word, Zev said on air. American economic interests worldwide are what they have named as targets.

3️⃣ The Ballroom Is a Five-Story Bunker With a Drone Port

Trump explained what sits under his 90,000-square-foot ballroom, and nobody in the room followed up. The military, he said, asked to “go down deep into the ground and build a military facility to go with the White House” — then “came up with a drone port on top.” Five stories down. Bulletproof windows, bulletproof sides, “drone proof.” He needs the room because Xi Jinping arrives September 24 and the current one seats 89. The people suing to stop it, he said, are “very, very disloyal to our country.”

2️⃣ Trump Answers a War Charge With a Children’s TV Name

Jon Ossoff said in Atlanta there is “something uniquely despicable about lying a nation into war,” and called Trump a “crook president” whose family “raked in billions.” Asked about it, Trump replied: “You mean Pee-Wee Herman? Pee-Wee Herman lookalike?” He tried the same joke at a Georgia rally and garbled it into “Pinky Herman.” The White House called Ossoff a theater kid. The same morning, the Supreme Court refused to rehear the E. Jean Carroll case. Five million dollars, final.

1️⃣ A General Says America Cannot Stop a Drone Swarm

Lieutenant General Joseph Jarrard, deputy commander of US Northern Command, was asked last Thursday whether he could defend the homeland against a drone swarm. He said no. “We don’t have the sensors... we are ill-equipped right now to handle something like that.” His boss told senators in March they defeat about a quarter of the drones they detect. Meanwhile the USS Benfold, escorting the carrier out of Asia, spent four days adrift in the South China Sea with no power, water or toilets, and the Lincoln is coming out of the Strait after 265 days at sea. Americans vote in 78 days.

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Judge Emmett Sullivan gave Attorney General Todd Blanche ten days to explain, in a sworn declaration, why the Justice Department still hasn’t produced the Epstein documents the court ordered released — then closed the hearing with a story about the one prosecutor he ever held in contempt, case citation included, so Blanche’s lawyers could look up how that ended.

Thursday’s Fivestack convened minutes after the hearing ended. Zev, Dean Blundell, attorney Anne P. Mitchell and Ellie Leonard of The Panicked Writer had all listened in live — and Zev read the hearing’s defining exchange straight from the transcript. It deserves to run in full:

THE COURT: Give me a date. I’m willing to work with you. Give me a date when this can be accomplished.

DOJ: I don’t have a date … it’s a little bit out of my control.

THE COURT: But you knew this was going to be discussed today, though.

DOJ: I’m not able to give you a date because, quite honestly, that date is out of my control.

THE COURT: You can’t give the court a time frame — 30 days, 60 days, whatever?

DOJ: I’m not able to, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Is there someone at the Department of Justice who can do that? … Pass the microphone to that person.

DOJ: It is forthcoming.

THE COURT: This much is forthcoming. Let’s be realistic … the public demands the time frame, not just me.

The department that indexed millions of pages in weeks cannot name a month.

The date fight was about the Epstein Files Transparency Act’s plainest requirement: every redaction gets a written justification, published in the Federal Register. Seven months after Sullivan’s injunction, the department has published none.

The day’s other fight was 37 pages of handwritten FBI notes — the agents’ original interview notes underlying the typed 302 reports in the Jane Doe 4 case. The department withheld them as “duplicative.” Sullivan wanted proof:

THE COURT: Just to take us at face value that the notes are substantially similar doesn’t really address it … All I need is proof … I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m just trying to do my job.

DOJ: I guess — is that an order?

“When a lawyer asks if that’s an order, it’s because if it’s an order, they can appeal it,” Mitchell said.

Leonard walked through the department’s logic until it fell over. “It’s duplicative — but also it’s under seal. Which doesn’t make any sense, because if it’s copies of stuff we already have, it wouldn’t be under seal,” she said. The department also argued handwriting is too hard to redact. “This is 37 pages. We could redact it before lunch,” Leonard said. This is the same review team that redacted “Lion King” from a released document because King is somebody’s name.

Then there are the files nobody has ever sees. “They left everything out of the files that wasn’t in English,” Leonard said. “That leaves out anything Russian. That leaves out the bank accounts.” The FBI employs linguists. An iPhone translates. The excuse doesn’t survive contact with a phone.

Mitchell compared a DOJ-redacted email Epstein sent himself against the unredacted original she already held: 30 names blacked out, and not one belongs to a victim. “The point isn’t who the names are. The point is the DOJ illegally redacted them,” Mitchell said. One name escaped the redaction team entirely — Epstein had spelled it “Donaldo Trupp.”

Why no contempt today, then? Mitchell, the panel’s lawyer, laid out the mechanics: contempt is a judge’s last resort, and Sullivan spent the day appeal-proofing it. A 15-minute recess stretched to nearly an hour while he skimmed the new binder Blanche’s team handed up — documents the plaintiff, in this unusual case, has never seen. Then he returned, told his contempt story, and put the citation on the record. “Judges don’t care if you appeal, because the trial still goes on,” Mitchell said.

Blanche will likely appeal the ten-day order. The department will keep moving the cups — Blundell called the whole performance “b******t three-card monte.” But the delay is doing something the department didn’t intend. In six months, Jeffrey Epstein has moved from dead tabloid billionaire to Donald Trump’s intimately linked associate — in the public’s settled understanding, not on the conspiracy fringe. Every stall confirms it: an innocent department would have ended this by producing the files.

Blanche has ten days — and one case citation to read first.

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Before the countdown, Dean broke the day’s business story: DOJ and SEC investigators had opened a probe into Mark Walter’s sports-empire loans — and weeks after Walter handed Trump a World Series ring at the White House, he sold the Lakers to Jared Kushner’s brother Josh and Bob Iger for a record $12.5 billion. “This is straight-up mobbery,” Dean said.

5️⃣ THE ECLIPSE

The moon slid exactly over the sun and switched off the daylight from Iceland to Spain — Spain got the rarest cut, totality at sunset. The Assyrians read eclipses as a change of kings coming. Dean isn’t superstitious. Zev counted the omens anyway.

4️⃣ HEGSETH BROKE THE CARRIER

Sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln are trying to go over the side — six or seven attempts, by Dean’s reporting from crew families, some of them fatal. The ship is at week 37 of a deployment that should have seen port at week six: no toothpaste, no soap, protein slop, mold in the HVAC, mail sanctioned, family rations never delivered, casualties from Iranian strikes unacknowledged. The Pentagon answered with a shrug and a stand-down while Pete Hegseth asks for $67 billion. Then the IRGC adviser told PBS the other half: Iran builds missiles faster than it fires them — and if Congress wants a real investigation, compare Trump’s assets before the war to after.

3️⃣ THE PLOT TO STEAL 2026

Trump told our cameras he won’t rule out a federal takeover of the midterms — “stranger things have happened.” Wisconsin answered overnight: Democrats refused Francesca Hong, the socialist the RGA spent $3.6 million elevating, and picked David Crowley by half a point — who promptly announced a unity tour WITH Hong, aimed at one target. The electorate is more switched on than the men buying its primaries. Also new: $20 million in electrified ICE gloves — twenty million dollars, for gloves that shock the person you grab.

2️⃣ PIRRO’S PAPER CASE

Jeanine Pirro convened a special grand jury over the Reflecting Pool — a case her own office already admitted was empty, against people who stopped to pick litter out of a public monument. A special grand jury cannot indict; it can investigate for 18 months and keep Trump’s story alive while a judge weighs killing the case for good. Trump’s pool guy remains uncharged.

1️⃣ THE DEATH-PLANE MANIFEST

Now we have the manifest. In the catering truck: Dan Scavino, Natalie Harp, and Walt Nauta — the Mar-a-Lago documents co-accused. On the decoy the White House said was targeted: Rubio, Hegseth, Bessent, and the entire press corps, told the president was aboard. Trump read the coverage and blamed the Secret Service. Lev Parnas told Narativ Live an hour earlier there may have been no threat at all — a side meeting he’s still running down. And the IRGC adviser answered the only question that matters: why would Iran kill him? “He’s busy destroying the United States of America. We’re enjoying this.”

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5️⃣ The Catering Cart Caper

A White House official confirmed the ruse on camera: Trump boarded Air Force One in Turkey for the cameras, slipped out the far side into a catering truck, and flew home on a second jet — while his press corps and most of his cabinet rode the decoy, some told mid-air they were on “a dangerous flight.” Dean noted the one exception: personal aide Natalie Harp rode out with the boss. He also pulled the Clinton precedent — a credible threat once moved a president to a private jet, and every passenger was told. Nobody told this press corps anything. No reporting yet shows the Iranian threat was real, and a president who brags he is winning this war hid from it behind the submarine sandwiches. “Truly spectacular selfishness,” Dean called it — and that was the charitable reading.

4️⃣ Republicans Bankroll The Socialist

Six states voted Tuesday, and in Wisconsin the biggest spender in the DEMOCRATIC governor’s primary was the Republican Governors Association — nearly $3.6 million in “attack” ads that every Democrat in the state read as a boost for democratic socialist Francesca Hong, the opponent Republicans believe they can beat in November. Dean called the whole practice, run by both parties, “a race to the bottom.” T extremes don’t legislate — you govern from consensus or you don’t govern — and a party that pays to nominate its opponent’s fringe has stopped trying to win arguments at all.

3️⃣ “Stranger Things Have Happened”

Wayne Allyn Root — who has spent a year begging Trump in print to seize the 2026 elections — pitched him a “national-security emergency” takeover of the midterms on Real America’s Voice after midnight. Trump answered: “Let me just say stranger things have happened. I will leave it at that.” Dean stacked the paper underneath the three words: NSPM-7 already lets Trump label opponents national-security threats, the Iran war supplies a standing emergency, and 2024’s “vote for me this one time and you will never have to vote again” supplied the intent. Cancel the elections and there is no way back. Dean’s count: 83 days to stop it at the ballot box.

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2️⃣ This Week’s Blindspot: The Quiet Iran Deal

Pakistan’s defense minister says the US and Iran are near “some sort of an arrangement” — and only 13 percent of left-leaning outlets have touched the story, this week’s Ground News Blindspot. Narativ’s Baku reporting sits directly underneath it: the hardline Revolutionary Guard wing that just took over Iran’s top security council is the same network that moved money through Trump’s Baku tower and into his Las Vegas condos. Maybe Tehran doesn’t want him dead. He’s their business partner. Dean answered the money trail with his grandfather, who walked into Berlin with the RAF in 1945: “We didn’t know how bad it was until we got there.”

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Breaking off the top: Tyler Boebert — Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s 21-year-old son — faces five new felony counts in Garfield County, Colorado: three for sexual exploitation of a child, two for contributing to the delinquency of a minor; he posted $10,000 bond Sunday, the affidavit is sealed, and he is presumed innocent. The math that matters: he faces sentencing on his 2024 deferred deal September 4 and 10, and new felonies four weeks out can turn “stay clean” into a felony record.

5️⃣ The Chair

Megan Romer co-chairs the Democratic Socialists of America — the movement whose label keeps winning Democratic primaries — and Zev and Dean played her New Yorker Radio Hour interview: she believes in owning the means of production, kept the DSA’s ground game home rather than turn it out for Kamala Harris, said she would probably have attended the October 8 rally, and called October 7 “largely inevitable.” Dean’s verdict landed hardest: she handed back every inch her movement won, a nightmare for Democrats 85 days from the midterms — while Zev counted the cost of a chair who keeps arming the other side’s red-scare machine. Paid subscribers can watch the full broadcast below.

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4️⃣ Epstein Was in the Building

Ellie Leonard joined live with the document chain she built from the DOJ files: a text thread (EFTA01620474) where an “unknown” contact tells Governor Kenneth Mapp “Seeing Trump people today, can we speak?” on November 13, 2016 — matched to Epstein by his own same-day email to himself repeating its “if I feel a sneeze coming on, I ask for legal advice” line — and Linda Stone’s thread, where Epstein answers “No, Trump Tower.” That is the day Trump sat in Trump Tower picking his first cabinet, five days after the election, with Michael Cohen — who says he never knew Epstein — working the building. Steve Bannon told Epstein on tape he was the one who could sink the campaign; Michael Wolff still holds those recordings.

3️⃣ Bibi Says No

Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Donald Trump’s Gaza plan to his face — no dodge, no diplomatic hedge, just no. An ally has concluded that defying this president costs nothing, and the art-of-the-deal presidency keeps failing to close.

2️⃣ Iran Writes the Terms

Day 162 of the Strait of Hormuz closure, and Iran’s top security official put the price in writing: lift the blockade, drop sanctions, pull US forces, pay reparations, release the frozen assets. Trump’s answer — America is “semi-negotiating,” plus a post demanding Iran pay reparations. Narativ’s Baku Files investigation, published Monday morning, explains the mumble: the Capital One filing on Trump’s Baku tower alleges laundering linked to the same Revolutionary Guard now across the table in Muscat — you don’t talk tough to a partner.

1️⃣ Trump’s Lawyer Takes the Files

Todd Blanche was sworn in as Attorney General while the show was on the air — Trump’s own defense lawyer, confirmed 50-49 with Bill Cassidy casting the deciding vote, now controls the Epstein files. Wednesday at 1 PM, Judge Sullivan makes him answer for the Jane Doe 4 handwritten FBI notes his department still withholds — and Chris Armitage’s case that New Mexico can charge Blanche over the Maxwell interview is already moving.

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5️⃣ Someone Is Paying Toronto Teens to Shoot at America

Toronto police arrested a 19-year-old and a boy of 15 for the July 27 shooting attack on the US Consulate — Chief Myron Demkiw said someone offered them payment over encrypted apps to pull the trigger. Dean Blundell has owned the story since dawn: two seized guns trace to 27 shootings across the GTA, Jewish institutions among the targets, and US prosecutors allege a Kata'ib Hezbollah commander bragged, "in Canada, we have our guys." Dean's read: two explanations survive — an Iranian proxy network hiring Canadian kids by app, or a false flag built to look like one.

4️⃣ Carr Hands Local TV to Nexstar and Sinclair

Brendan Carr overrode Congress. His FCC voted 2–1 to scrap the 39 percent cap — Congress's 2004 law against one company reaching more than 39 percent of American homes — and replaced it with case-by-case review his own commission controls. Zev produced local TV for years: the 6 PM local newscast, not the networks, is where America gets its news, and Sinclair and Nexstar now get to buy the dial. Anna Gomez dissented: "unlawful on its face."

3️⃣ Senators See Potential Bribery in Trump's Korean $2 Million

Korea's Base Group paid Donald Trump's business $2 million while its affiliate fought his Commerce Department over aluminum tariffs — Trump logged the money in his own June disclosure as a "nonrefundable development fee." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Democrats demanded answers Thursday: the payment "raises significant concerns about pay-to-play politics and the potential for bribery." Dean's Canadian precedent: Brian Mulroney took $300,000 and his majority party lost nearly every seat.

2️⃣ Paul Refers Pardoned Fauci to Trump's DOJ

Rand Paul's committee voted 8–7 to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt and referred a pardoned man to Todd Blanche's Justice Department — the same day as Blanche's first Senate floor vote. Fauci pleaded the Fifth 111 times by Paul's count; Paul's pardon-voids-the-Fifth theory stands untested in any court, and Dean's sources called the referral a headline with no legal lever behind it. Zev named the play: scapegoat the scientist, and nobody asks about the president who ran the response while 1.2 million Americans died.

1️⃣ Trump Hunts Leakers Who Counted His Missiles

Iran and Oman announced their Strait of Hormuz deal an hour before air — a 60-day transit corridor negotiated around Washington that, Dean reported, excludes American and Israeli vessels by name. Trump claims control of the strait; the deal's authors didn't invite him. The Washington Post reports Trump berated Pete Hegseth at Camp David over "dangerously low" missile stocks — the White House insists the clash "literally never happened" — and Trump vows "long term jail sentences" for the leakers. Zev's math: sixty days of open water puts cheap gas on election day — the only win this war has left to sell.

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5️⃣ Blanche Trades the Fund for the Gavel

Todd Blanche killed Donald Trump’s $1.776 billion fund in writing on Sunday night. By Tuesday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee paid him for it — twelve to ten, party line, and his nomination for attorney general goes to the Senate floor. Zev and Dean played Sheldon Whitehouse’s markup statement at length, because Whitehouse prosecuted the case his own committee wouldn’t: the FBI took four 302s from a woman who said Trump sexually assaulted her at 13 or 14, and the Justice Department released one — “the one that did not mention Donald Trump,” Whitehouse said. “Only because they got caught were those 302s produced.” Dean priced the two Republican flips that advanced the nomination: “All he had to do to get those two cuck votes was put out two graphics of, I swear to God, the slush fund’s dead. It’s not.” Blanche stays acting attorney general until the full Senate votes.

4️⃣ Cori Bush — This Week’s Ground News Blindspot

Tuesday’s Ground News Blindspot: Cori Bush. The progressive the Squad lost in 2024 stood on Tuesday’s ballot to take her St. Louis seat back from Wesley Bell — the same AIPAC-backed money that beat her is back in the race — and the right wing isn’t covering it. Zev called it a bellwether: a progressive comeback running through the night’s primaries, straight at pro-Israel lobby money. What gets covered decides what exists — Ground News shows you both the story and the silence.

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3️⃣ Wyden Catches the Banks

Ron Wyden dropped a 67-page report Tuesday morning: JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America watched Jeffrey Epstein’s money move for two decades and sat on the paperwork the law required — Deutsche Bank on more than $250 million, including wires paying women in Russia and Eastern Europe; Bank of America on $170 million in Leon Black-linked reports. Wyden gave 60 Minutes an interview on the money in March. The story never aired. “Bari Weiss, in firing Sharyn Alfonsi, also killed the story about Jeffrey Epstein’s money,” Zev said, and set the report inside the decade he has spent on the same ledger: “It’s all the same network because it really is the Russian network.”

2️⃣ Trump Turns on Pirro

Trump spent Monday trashing his own U.S. attorney. Jeanine Pirro “folded like an umbrella,” the president said — she “choked.” Her offense: she stopped prosecuting four people for Reflecting Pool vandalism that never happened. All four defendants walked, and DOJ’s own filing blames contractor error — a botched, no-bid paint job whose price climbed from $1.8 million to $13.1 million, tracked by Narativ since June. By Tuesday, the Washington Post reported, Trump wanted the new helipad ripped up too; he doesn’t like the presidential seal. “We’re quickly approaching a Marie Antoinette moment,” Dean said. Both hosts gave Trump’s Oval Office defense of the case the same review: “Come on, bro.”

1️⃣ Michigan Decides What the Party Is

Michigan carried the close. Abdul El-Sayed — Bernie Sanders, AOC, an army of volunteers — against Haley Stevens and the biggest bet AIPAC has ever placed on a single race; polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern. And there the show turned. Dean had spent the hour declaring the patient dead — “The United States of America is a fraudulent country,” he said, reaching for The Big Short — and Zev wouldn’t sign the certificate: “I struggle when you say things like that.” His counter was on the ballot. “This is democracy, folks. This is what it looks like. You elect the people who represent the views of your people,” Zev said. Dean set a deadline anyway. Ninety days. “You have 90 days to send a message to this prick.” The money moved first all day — the fund, the wires, the invoice, the AIPAC millions. At eight o’clock, the voters answer.

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▶ Watch:

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Zev opened Thursday’s special report with a warning and a promise. “Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water,” he said. “Trump Russia is back.”

Lev Parnas corrected him inside ten seconds. “Never left, Zev.”

Fivestack didn’t run — Dean Blundell was out. What replaced it was eighty minutes with the man who spent years inside the world Narativ has been reporting on from the outside, and it started with a letter.

Shalev told viewers what he has now said publicly: Melania Trump’s personal lawyer demanded he retract Narativ’s reporting on Paolo Zampolli, apologize, and pay damages. No suit has been filed. Today Shalev’s attorney, the trial lawyer John B. Williams, answered Alejandro Brito on the record.

Shalev read it on air. The demand, Williams wrote, is “defective under the Florida Retraction Statute,” which requires a claimant to specify the statements alleged to be false and defamatory, and to do it with particularity. “You do not identify what specifically is false,” the letter reads, “nor do you provide any hint as to what the true facts may be.”

Shalev’s own summary was shorter. “They don’t actually allege that I’ve done anything that is defamatory at all,” he said. “There is no maligning here. This is just truth.”

Then he mentioned Zampolli’s 40th birthday party, with a toast from former Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin.

Then he showed the emails.

Zampolli wrote to a Russian diplomat at the UN in September 2012 thanking him for a meeting with Ambassador Vitaly Churkin and asking that Moscow — “capital,” in his phrasing — send materials for a tiger-conservation event, Vladimir Putin’s pet cause. He asked that both Churkin and Sergey Kislyak be informed. He wrote to Prince Bandar offering Trump SoHo units while, by Shalev’s reporting, brokering Caribbean votes at the UN General Assembly. He told Ambassador Churkin’s private Gmail that Churkin’s attack on Christiane Amanpour’s Crimea coverage was “fantastic.”

And on March 5, 2014, he wrote to the billionaire Ron Burkle: “I know you have been taking good care of 67. We are all working hard for 2016 election.”

That was written more than a year before Donald Trump announced he was running.

“Unless Paolo knew,” Shalev said.

Then the charts went up — two of them, built between Narativ and Parnas over the past several days. “We’ve been connecting dots the past couple of days,” Parnas said.

The first put Vitaly Churkin at the centre and Narativ’s own reporting around him: Donald Trump, Paolo Zampolli, Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, Sergei Lavrov. “These are not sideline characters who elected Donald Trump,” Shalev said. “These are the people who did it.”

The second started with a question Parnas had been chewing on about the Tate brothers — why Romania, of all countries. “Eastern Europe is my back,” he said. “I know all the major players over there.” His sources, he told viewers, place the Tates in Romania under the protection of Semion Mogilevich — the man the FBI has called the boss of bosses of the Russian mob, and, Parnas said, the partner of the Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Parnas has sat with both. “I remember going back to 2010 or 2011, sitting in Kyiv and having coffee with Mogilevich and Firtash together.”

Run the two charts against each other and a name sits on both: Sergey Belyakov, the FSB Academy graduate Jeffrey Epstein introduced to Peter Thiel in 2015 without mentioning the FSB Academy. Belyakov, Parnas said, is close to Kirill Dmitriev — the Putin envoy now conducting American diplomacy alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “When I saw that,” Parnas said, “I basically realized that it never ended.”

Shalev supplied the join. Svetlana Pozhidaeva got her US visa on a Belyakov recommendation, went to work for Jeffrey Epstein, and when she was finished there went to work for Paolo Zampolli at the Dominica mission to the United Nations. Epstein held Russian visas for sixteen straight years — one sponsored by Belyakov’s ministry, one by the FSB’s own veterans’ fund.

And behind all of it, Shalev pointed at the oldest relationship on the board. Mogilevich and Robert Maxwell were business partners moving billions out of the collapsing Soviet Union. Epstein is widely regarded as Maxwell’s heir apparent, and met Ghislaine Maxwell while her father was still alive. “You have to ask the question,” Shalev said. “What is the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Semion Mogilevich?” He said the answer is coming.

Parnas closed on what he thinks the demand letter was really about. The Epstein files, he said, are missing the one thing that should be everywhere in them. “Where’s all the Russian money in the Epstein files? Where are all the Russian involvement of the Epstein files? Because that’s the part that they’re not releasing.”

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Somewhere in the last twenty minutes, Shalev looked down at a number. The legal defense fund he had launched a few hours earlier had passed $7,800. As we post this it was nearing $10,000.

“I actually can’t tell you the sense of relief,” he said, “knowing that I don’t have to find $10,000 right now to pay just the retaining fees.”

Parnas had the last word on the letter. “Melania Trump and Donald Trump made a big mistake by going after Zev Shalev.”

Shalev gave the last word to Nancy Pelosi who famously told Donald Trump, “With you, all roads lead to Russia.”

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Dean Blundell missed Wednesday’s Fivestack for a meeting and Lev Parnas took the chair.

1️⃣ Cornyn Won’t Vote Yes on Blanche

John Cornyn told NBC News at 1:14 that he is not prepared to vote yes on Todd Blanche, and the meeting the two men were meant to hold never happened. Chuck Grassley gave every Republican on Judiciary until four o’clock — thirty minutes after the show came off air. Cornyn wants one thing in writing: that the administration will abandon the $1.778 billion fund a federal judge has already found was assembled without any real settlement between Trump and the IRS. Blanche says his word should be enough. “Blanche is basically taking a bullet for Donald Trump,” Parnas said, comparing him to Michael Cohen, and said a source told him before air that Cornyn is not getting his letter — he is getting phone calls. Parnas made the point that gets lost: Trump never needs the confirmation. Blanche can stay acting attorney general as long as Trump wants him there.

5️⃣ Bari Weiss Picks Five People Who Will Never Cost Trump a Settlement

Weiss named her 60 Minutes bench Wednesday morning — Ross Douthat, Trevor Phillips, Norah O’Donnell, Sebastian Junger and Gianna Toboni. Zev has interviewed Junger on Narativ and said so, and still called the roster what it is. Douthat writes opinion on Catholic questions for the New York Times. “To suggest that he could be taking Scott Pelley’s chair at 60 Minutes is astonishing,” Zev said. Days earlier the former 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega said the head of CBS News told her to report events that never happened in her coverage of the Minneapolis shootings. She refused.

3️⃣ Fauci Took the Fifth 106 Times, and Paul Threw His Lawyer Out

The show ran the tape — Rand Paul refusing to recognize Fauci’s attorney, then “Security, please remove him from the room.” What the lawyer was trying to say, Zev explained, is that Paul’s theory has never been tested: that a pardon cancels a witness’s Fifth Amendment protection. Zev called the proceeding baseless and vindictive, then declined to leave it there. The public still deserves to know why gain-of-function research was greenlit, and why it happened in Wuhan without better controls. It also deserves to know why Fauci alone sits in the chair when Trump’s own mismanagement of COVID cost millions of lives. Parnas, who ignored his own lawyers and went on Maddow rather than take the Fifth, put it plainly: two things can be true at once.

2️⃣ China Is Guiding Iran’s Missiles, and Trump Says He Bombs Tonight

Zev confirmed what he flagged earlier in the week — Chinese satellite technology is guiding the Iranian missiles now finding their targets — and reported that man-portable air defense systems are being delivered to Iran to bring down aircraft. Trump is threatening another assault tonight, which depletes American stockpiles further and makes the next fight harder. Zev returned to a rule he applies to Putin: he likes to own both sides of a war, because then he picks the winner. Parnas said he is reporting out more than 30,000 North Korean troops moving to fight in Ukraine.

Melania Trump’s demand letter came up early. Zev noted the letter names nothing inaccurate — it says the reporting is inaccurate and asks for it to come down. Narativ’s response goes back Wednesday.

Parnas closed on a tease rather than a story. He asked himself why Romania, made calls, and came back with Semion Mogilevich — one of the most wanted men in the world, and the godfather of Vladimir Putin’s first election campaign. Parnas says Mogilevich “might be linked” to Paolo Zampolli. Both men stopped there. It gets its own show.

▶ WatchThank you Cat: Poli-Psych, LC - Silence is Complicity, Cash Flow Collective, Lyudmila and Daniel, Jason Gael, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lev Parnas! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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Washington buried Lindsey Graham on Tuesday, and the day arranged itself around his casket. Trump delivered the eulogy at the National Cathedral; Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelensky sat in the pews — the only room those two men shared all day. Zev and Dean Blundell followed one thread through the five: a democracy runs on people forced to answer for themselves — and everyone who owes answers is running out the clock.

🚨 The Cathedral

“He never saw a war that he didn’t like — but he wanted it for the good of our country,” Trump told the mourners. Graham died July 11 of an aortic dissection, hours after flying home from Kyiv; John Cornyn wants the unfinished toxicology published “to rule out any foul play.”

“The world that we used to have is being buried by Washington in the form of Lindsey Graham,” Zev said. Russia broke that world; Graham was the last man who lived in it.

5️⃣ Bibi’s Eighth Visit — and Pickaxe Mountain

Netanyahu walked into the White House at eleven for his eighth meeting with Trump — more than any foreign leader — carrying Israeli intelligence that Iran buried its centrifuges 145 meters under a mountain near Natanz, too deep for Israel’s bombs. “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that,” Trump said — “he wants me to stay involved” — then threatened anyway: “We’ll have to take out Pickaxe if we don’t make a deal… we’ll take it out very easily.” Two men bargained over a war no American voted on.

The Senate, at least, still holds votes: it set an evening vote on the sanctions bill it renamed for Graham — the bill he flew to Kyiv to sell on his last full day alive.

The Letter — and a Defense Fund

Dean spent the week brawling with Shopify CEO Toby Lutke over weighted voting — five votes for the rich, none for pensioners — and the fight over who gets a voice ran straight into Zev’s own. Melania Trump’s lawyer sent Zev a legal letter last week over Narativ’s reporting; on Tuesday Zev announced a legal defense fund, live on air. “It’s an attack on independent media voices. It’s an attack on the people here on Substack,” Zev said — details in the coming days.

4️⃣ The Tates Stay Locked Down

Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis ruled Monday that Andrew and Tristan Tate stay in Miami federal jail at least through an August 13 detention hearing while Britain builds its case on 59 charges of rape and human trafficking — all denied, each an allegation until a court rules. The brothers have sat in solitary since their July 18 arrest; Monday’s ruling sent them back — another 60 days, as Zev and Dean read it on air. “The public is greenlighting for them to get murdered in jail,” their lawyer Joseph McBride said. Twenty years of manufactured influence bought nothing in that courtroom — for once, the rule of law held.

3️⃣ Beshear to McConnell: Prove It or Resign

Andy Beshear put it in writing to Mitch McConnell on Monday: “directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.” McConnell fell at home June 14, landed in the hospital with pneumonia, moved to rehab, and hasn’t been seen in public since.

Forty-three days. Zero votes.

His office offers two photos and staff statements; Beshear said the physician’s note “does not discuss your actual condition, including whether you can speak, reason, or carry out your duties.” On air, Zev and Dean pressed the question that record invites: who can prove the senator can serve at all? If he goes, Kentucky law leaves the seat empty until a special election.

2️⃣ Toronto: The Consulate, Then the Bagel Shops

Somebody fired on the US Consulate in downtown Toronto at 4:46 Monday morning — one shell casing, a white Honda Accord with no plates that outran police. It was the second shooting there this year; Toronto police said in June that recruiters pay young people to shoot at synagogues, Jewish schools and the consulate — and film it.

A day earlier, attackers hit two locations of Kiva’s Bagel Bar within the hour — one by gunfire, one with a smashed window. “Seventy percent of hate crimes in this country are visited upon one percent of the population, and that is the Jewish community,” Dean said. His read: the rage aims at Benjamin Netanyahu, “not Israel or Jewish Canadians” — and lands on a bagel shop an ocean from the war.

1️⃣ Blanche, the Memo — and the Brito Connection

Todd Blanche stands one committee vote — Thursday morning — from running the Justice Department. Narativ put the memo on the record: at 7:49 the morning Blanche sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell last July, one DOJ official asked another to summarize the “salacious statements” in the file — allegations logged against Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew and Howard Lutnick, closing on William Barr, “for being present when a girl was raped.” Nineteen minutes after the reply, Maxwell began answering Blanche’s questions. Allegations in a government file — not findings; and Blanche is not confirmed. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis want the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund killed in writing before they vote, and one Republican defection sinks the nomination.

Then Zev landed the connection nobody else has printed. Alejandro Brito — the lawyer behind Melania Trump’s letter to Zev — is one of four lawyers, Blanche among them, whom Judge Kathleen Williams sanctioned July 13 — and referred to the Florida Bar — over the IRS lawsuit that spawned the fund. Zev reported Brito had someone else in his office sign the Melania letter. “It will be a tragedy if we allow the President of the United States to install his defense lawyer as the Attorney General,” Zev said. “There goes our system of justice.”

THE PATTERN

The people who owe answers are running out the clock — Blanche on the memo, McConnell on his health, the Tates on extradition — while Iran, Russia and China move as one axis and democracy’s alliances come apart, one funeral at a time. Washington buried the last man of the old world today. Thursday, two senators decide whether the file on the president’s own conduct passes to the president’s own lawyer. Narativ will be there first.

Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Robin Payes, LeftieProf, Cathy R. Payne, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe