Narativ with Zev Shalev (Audio)

Episodes

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  Bucha Mayor Trolls Trump's Diesel Deal With Putin 28.10.2026 26m

  The mayor of Bucha has an answer to Donald Trump's diesel deal with Vladimir Putin. He posted a photo of himself holding a jerry can of diesel and asked everyone to fill one and ship it to the United States, so Ukraine can outsupply Putin and save Americans billions.Jacob Kaarsbo saw the post on the mayor's phone on Monday, after the two laid flowers at the Bucha memorial. The former Danish intelligence officer joined Narativ Live from Kyiv on Wednesday, four days after driving in from Copenhagen with a convoy of 11 cars for the Ukrainian army. One blew its engine on the road. Cars for Ukraine, the Danish group behind the convoys, passes 1,000 vehicles next month.Kaarsbo's reading of the diesel deal: Russia has no diesel to spare. It has an export ban in force and has been importing diesel through South Korea. The deal is "smoke and mirrors," he said, a route to getting sanctions lifted. Zev Shalev went further: it puts Russian oil back into the open market and legitimizes the shadow fleet.The anger in Kyiv is real and mostly unspoken, Kaarsbo said. "They feel the betrayal." A senior Ukrainian officer told him on Wednesday, through a translator, that Ukraine and Denmark have to fight Russian fascism together. Then he laughed and added: and American fascism too.Kaarsbo named Putin's war crime: the deportation of Ukrainian children, which Putin has bragged about. Trump, he said, is threatening sanctions on the International Criminal Court that prosecutes such crimes. "Donald Trump sides with him."Why now? Danish pundits say Trump wants cheaper diesel before the midterms. Kaarsbo called that "b******t." He expects Trump to try to hold power whatever the result; Denver Riggleman has warned the machinery to annul a defeat is already in the works. Shalev offered two scenarios: Russia helps the GOP win, or a Nixon ending if the vote collapses far enough that the party tells him to go.Kaarsbo said he predicted this in his book: Putin manipulates Trump through a "treasonous web" of finances. The Financial Times showed this weekend how the Russians got into the Alaska gas deal; Shalev named the route: Don Jr.'s hunting companion, a man tied to Putin's bodyguards.On Starlink, Kaarsbo said Europe has the satellite technology and must scale it. While Musk was throttling Ukraine's connection, someone sabotaged Starlink antennas in Bulgaria, Poland and Lithuania. "Classical GRU stuff," he said.He woke at 3 a.m. Monday to the air defense battery next to his hotel. The one place in the city with real destruction is a marketplace with no military target in sight, struck again and again. The students were drinking in the park the next night.His last word: Ukraine is doing well on the front line and innovating faster than Russia. Build it up from Europe and Canada and it can end the war without the Americans. Shalev: Carney already has a plan with Zelensky.SourcesNarativ Live, Oct. 28, 2026, live from Kyiv with Jacob Kaarsbo (the replay)Jacob Kaarsbo, Intel Brief, "Live from Kyiv Q&A Special," Oct. 27, 2026: https://jacobkaarsbo.substack.com/p/live-from-kyiv-q-and-a-specialKyiv Post, Oct. 27, 2026, Treasury weighs lifting sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund (NYT): https://www.kyivpost.com/post/88359CNBC, Oct. 24, 2026, Starlink restored, Musk admits throttle: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/24/ukraine-starlink-starshield-service-restored.html 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
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  BREAKING NEWS: EISENKOT DECLARES VICTORY IN ISRAELI ELECTIONS 28.10.2026 39m

  Polls closed in Israel at 10 p.m. local time, which is 4 p.m. in New York. Within the hour the three main channels put the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot at 52 seats and Netanyahu's at 50, with the Arab lists at 17 or 18, the most they have ever held. Zev went live on Narativ at 7:30 p.m. and read the night the other way from the wires: "A lot of the reporting out there is going to say that exit polls indicate a deadlock. I don't believe that's the case."The reason was the speech. Eisenkot stood up at his headquarters and said, "We made history." He called the outgoing government "the coalition of the fiasco" and said the voters "voted against Bibi Netanyahu as the Prime Minister of the State of Israel." He ruled out another election: "In elections with such a high turnout, it would be a mistake to go out for a second round." "Netanyahu, do not dare use the security of Israel for your needs." He promised a Zionist government and said, "It is the end of the era of them and us."Zev heard a former chief of staff putting the military on notice: the soldiers answer to an interim prime minister now, and Netanyahu was warned not to use them to protect himself. That matters in the White House, because Trump has been saying he goes back to war with Iran next week alongside his best friend, and his best friend just lost power. "With one of them gone, it's really interesting how it's going to fall apart for Trump."Lev Parnas joined from a car in Florida. "Two down. Bolsonaro and Bibi, and Trump's next," he said. He was cautious about the next 30 days: calls were already being placed to Israel from the Trump administration, and Netanyahu would push back hard. Lev's precedent was Orban, who rumbled about staying until the power of the people was too strong. Zev's was Lula: saying it is over is what ends the rigging conversation.Both men put the Arab vote at the center. Turnout reached 77.7%, and the Arab turnout ran higher, because those voters wanted the Oct. 7 inquiry Netanyahu never allowed. Seventeen seats for parties that used to stay home is what makes Eisenkot's coalition and breaks Netanyahu's.The consequence runs past Israel. Netanyahu helped install Trump in 2016 as part of the alliance Narativ calls the enemies of democracy, and the money followed: a billion dollars under Bibi's oversight through Jared Kushner, the Gaza waterfront plans, the Epstein network that tied Netanyahu to Putin. Lev wanted the new government's first act to be aid into Gaza and an end to the bombing.The official count takes days, and Netanyahu has not spoken. Likud's 24 seats make it the largest party and still leave him nowhere to build. Eisenkot declared victory, told Bibi to retire, and told the army whose orders to follow. The count decides whether Israel heard him. 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
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  Democrats Tie Trump To Epstein But Have Not Made The Case (Yet) 27.10.2026 35m

  The House Judiciary Democrats put a case in writing Monday: Donald Trump as a participant in Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, and Todd Blanche covering it up. On Narativ Live, Ellie Leonard, who reads the Epstein files page by page, and Zev Shalev agreed on the aim and doubted the work.Leonard called the report "a big buildup to a best-of album." The Katie Johnson story, the Jane Doe stories and the Maxwell proffer were already public, she said, and "it just wasn't good enough at this late stage in the game." Shalev said the point of the document is a special counsel in a new Congress, and launching one against a sitting president "is about as serious as you can get." "Don't fail this."Both read the Blanche interview the same way. Blanche flew to a Florida prison in July 2025, Maxwell raised Jane three times, and he cut her off each time; the FBI had built him a slide deck of prominent names the night before, and Jane was on it. Leonard typed her own transcript of the tapes. By her count Blanche asked about Trump far less than about Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman and Bill Barr, Maxwell called Trump "a total gentleman," and that short exchange, in her reading, is what got Maxwell moved. She put the dates together: the birthday letter Wall Street Journal reporters published, the Situation Room meeting the same day, the proffer one week later, the move to Bryan, Texas, one week after that. Shalev held the line: obstruction "may be true, but we don't know," and the report does not say who sent Blanche the deck or who compiled it.Leonard's own leads sit where the report did not look. Hundreds of pages of handwritten FBI notes are unsearchable, so nothing in them was scrubbed. A whistleblower says documents under case number 31E-HQ-C1461253 are withheld from Congress, and someone at the Justice Department leaked Jane Doe 4's notes, unredacted, to conservative media. She counts 43 on-the-record accusations of sexual assault against Trump. There are no foreign-language files in the release.Shalev's lead is money. Paolo Zampolli, Trump's "my friend Paolo" in Beatrice Keul's account, arranged visas for models, sold fake passports through the United Nations and sold Trump Soho condos, and was a special envoy until last week; the report mentions him only as the visa guy. Nothing in the files predates 2008, the year Shalev says Epstein helped crash the market. A special counsel scoped to sex crimes alone would repeat the Mueller mistake, and one that reports to the attorney general cannot work. Leonard added the shield: executive privilege, which only the Supreme Court can override.Shalev said on air that he gave Raskin's office material from Narativ's Zampolli reporting and introduced one witness, and that this is not an endorsement of the report. The Keul allegation, he said, is the new thing in it, and the question now is who in Congress writes the special counsel's mission. 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
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  LULA BEATS TRUMP’S MAN — AND SERBIA’S STRONGMAN FALLS THE SAME NIGHT 26.10.2026 22m

  Brazil’s electoral court called it at 9:12 PM Brasília time. With 99.76 percent of sections counted, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took 51.75 percent — 64,066,539 votes — to Flávio Bolsonaro’s 48.25 percent, 59,724,015. A margin of 4.3 million. A fourth term. And, as Zev put it from the desk Sunday night, the end of “the most sustained campaign a US administration has ever run to pick Brazil’s president.”Three weeks ago this was Flávio’s to lose. He beat Lula in the first round on October 4 by 2.2 million votes. Trump called it “a very tight but great victory.” Prediction markets had him at 78 percent as polls opened Sunday morning. The polls said 51–49. The polls were right.How the night wentPolls were due to close at 4 PM Eastern. At 4:11, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered every station in the country to stay open two more hours after both campaigns asked for time — Lula’s coalition citing bus service cut in São Paulo and Salvador, Flávio’s citing weather. The electoral court froze the count at 4:20 with a quarter of one percent in. It restarted at six.Lula led the first boxes. Flávio passed him at about 15 percent counted and held the lead through 45. Then the South and Southeast — the regions Flávio was supposed to own — came in, and Lula went from nothing to two million ahead. “Squeaked away with quite a resounding victory,” Zev said on air. “I say squeak and resounding in the same sentence. It doesn’t always fit.”Turnout was 80.79 percent of 158.7 million registered voters.What Brazil voted againstReuters reported Saturday, on ten current and former US officials, that Trump’s team spent eighteen months working to return the Bolsonaros to power: Magnitsky sanctions on Alexandre de Moraes, the justice who convicted Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a coup; visas revoked for the justices who sat with him; tariffs on Brazilian goods with the father’s prosecution named as the reason; a terrorist designation for Brazil’s gangs announced the day after Flávio met Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in May. Eduardo Bolsonaro worked the State Department from Washington.Lula told voters for months that Washington was trying to pick their president. Zev’s read Sunday night went further: that the Trump administration’s hand showed in the first round, and that the second round was the one Brazil got to decide for itself. “Trump will try and make it seem like he had nothing to do with all of this,” he said. “He was caught in the cookie jar.”Flávio had promised amnesty for his father, who is serving 27 years. He admitted taking about $12 million from banker Daniel Vorcaro to fund a film about him and is under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. Brazil read all of that and still gave him 48 percent. Not a landslide. A decision.Serbia, the same nightAleksandar Vučić conceded Serbia’s parliamentary election ninety minutes after polls closed in Belgrade — fourteen years of one-man rule, gone to a leaderless Students’ List with no politicians on it. By his own party’s projection the students take 135 to 140 of 250 seats to his 105, roughly 2.2 million votes to 1.7 million, on turnout near 70 percent — the highest since Milošević fell in 2000. He blamed independent media, unnamed European governments and “an American deep state.” Putin had endorsed him.The movement began under a concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station that collapsed in November 2024 and killed sixteen people. Dijana Hrka, who lost her son there, told N1 from the Belgrade crowd: “I have been waiting for this moment for two years.”And in Venezuela, María Corina Machado slipped back into the country Sunday after a year outside it — the story Narativ led with at 1:30 PM, before Brazil took the night.The patternOrbán fell in April after sixteen years. Vučić fell Sunday after fourteen. Brazil kept Trump’s man out. Three ballots in one year on the same model — Putin’s endorsement, Trump’s friendship, the courts and the broadcaster in one set of hands — and the model lost all three.Israel votes next. The United States votes November 3. Zev’s note to the chat as the Brazil numbers settled: the tactic that showed up in São Paulo Sunday — the buses that didn’t run — travels. “Plan extra hours when you go to the polls on the 3rd.”Trump phoned Lula before the vote and wished him luck. His State Department declined, in writing, to say it would respect the result. Now it has one.Watch the full breaking news broadcast above. Subscribe free — The Narativ in your inbox every day. Know Sooner: narativ.org 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
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  Russia Is Sinking Ships To Provoke a NATO Reaction 23.10.2026 57m

  A Russian drone sank the cargo ship Khoryv 13 miles off Constanța, Romania, on Friday morning. One sailor dead, three missing. Olga Lautman counts seven ships hit in the Black Sea in two weeks and 31 sailors dead or missing. "This used to start world wars," she said on Narativ Live. Europe is shifting forces to the Black Sea, she said. It is barely news. Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria have asked NATO to guard the lanes; Zev Shalev called it an act of war and NATO's job, pending an American sign-off.On Starlink, four views. Lautman's view: Starshield, the military version, sits on a Pentagon contract Europe pays for, so the order came from Trump to the Pentagon and nobody needed Musk. "This is on Trump. This is not Musk." Lev Parnas said the question is the trick. "Who cares if it's Musk, Trump. The bottom line, it's not working." Oleksandr Bolbirer, who writes Voice of Ukraine from Kyiv, said some units have service back and some do not. "On top, it's sunshine. If you look on the bottom, there's still some fog out there." Shalev's point: whoever flipped the switch, Ukraine's drones have flown blind for nine days, while Jared Kushner told Zelensky not to hit refineries.They split again on why Russia is hitting Kyiv so hard now. Bolbirer thinks Moscow is sprinting before the American vote: "They're not going to have as many chances as they have today." Lautman disagreed flat. Russia's turn on Kyiv began the day Trump took office, she said, and "the Russians don't give a flying s**t about American elections." Shalev read both as one argument: Russia moves when American power changes hands, and it does in 12 days. Parnas called Bolbirer's view "Ukrainian hope." Nobody disputed the rest: cluster munitions over Kyiv, eight regions' power stations hit in 24 hours, a heating season begun on the 15th with the pipes still cold, Bolbirer's daughter barely in school. "They are erasing us," Bolbirer said. "But we want to live."On Nov. 3, Parnas says his sources have Trump and Speaker Johnson agreeing not to convene the new Congress, "almost a done deal." Lautman expects Democrats to be seated, by an uprising in American streets if need be, and then expects little: a subpoena to Musk goes nowhere without a Justice Department to enforce it.What comes after splits them too. Lautman: the Trump–Xi meeting on the 18th produces nothing, Putin is China's client, and no one can sign away Ukrainian land without a referendum. Bolbirer: dictators do not read rules, and if the big powers sit down together, "who's going to come in?" Parnas: the next front is energy, Russian gas back to fill the hole Iran's strikes on Qatar opened, and he does not trust Germany or France through a winter. Lautman trusts the eastern flank whatever Germany does. Shalev: it is one movement, capturing democracies one at a time, and what Bolbirer lives under could reach America in months; a big enough vote on Nov. 3 is the first answer, and Trump cannot face Xi for a country that just voted against him. 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
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  BREAKING: Russia Is Interfering in Texas Senate Race 22.10.2026 31m

  Russia is in the Texas Senate race. A Kremlin troll crew posted a fake video in Texas using a stolen face to accuse James Talarico of abusing him as a child; Graphika pins it on Storm-1516, the crew that ran the same story on Tim Walz in 2024. Talarico's opponent, Ken Paxton, runs on $158 million from Musk. Homeland Security searched Ilhan Omar's house. Abdul El-Sayed got the Muslim Brotherhood question again.Lev Parnas said the three hours Steve Witkoff spent with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday were mostly about gas. "Majority of the conversations had to do with Nord Stream," Parnas told Narativ Live, citing his sources. The Gulf war knocked out Qatar's gas facilities, Germany and the Baltics now lean on American and Canadian LNG, and there is not enough of it. "Now Russian gas is going to have to come into play. And they're now figuring out how to make that happen." Ukraine barely came up, he says.The day before, Parnas says, Jared Kushner called in by video, sick, to demand that Zelensky stop hitting Russian facilities. Then Witkoff saluted Putin as a humanitarian for freeing Stephen Hubbard, 74, a retired teacher four years in a Russian prison. "I literally threw up in my mouth," Parnas said of the tape.Freeing the teacher was Putin's plan. From the first Trump and Witkoff meetings with Putin, Parnas says, the Kremlin has released a prisoner each time, and Dmitry Medvedev has said in an interview that the state needs to replenish its prisoners to trade. The release hands Witkoff a win and hands Vance a line: are you upset we got an American back? "It's not Donald Trump coming up with this. This is Putin's plan."Trump gave real concessions first: he paused the Russia sanctions, Russian diesel is moving into the American market, and Ukraine's Starlink went dark while missiles hit Kyiv. Putin engineered the shortage with his war, and he is now the only supplier who can fill it.Parnas says the three-way meeting with China is set for about Nov. 13, ten days after the midterms. Each president flies in with his oligarchs, Musk among them, "literally sitting there splitting up the world." The war is China's, Russia is the proxy, and China keeps quiet to arrive at the end as peacemaker for a war it caused.Parnas says his sources have Trump holding the Iran strike until after Nov. 3 to run out the clock, and if the country is at war, Speaker Johnson may simply not convene Congress to seat the winners. He was there in 2019 with Giuliani; the election workers they smeared sued. "At least we had guardrails. Where are the guardrails now?" Federal agents will stand in polling places, and Todd Blanche's DOJ is there to make an accusation stick.His answer is Hungary's: make it too big to rig. Vote early, in person, take your neighbor, and bring your phone; you will need the evidence on Election Day and after. 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
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  EXCLUSIVE: 5 White House Insiders Connected To Russian Proxy State in the Balkans 16.10.2026 31m

  Lev Parnas says Zampolli’s firing is a house-clearing before the Democrats take the House. Olga Lautman says Republika Srpska is a Kremlin proxy and anyone doing business there works for Moscow. On Narativ Live, the two connect five people around Trump to one region.Paolo Zampolli was not fired for the deals, Lev Parnas told Narativ Live on Friday. He was fired because of who is coming. “Now the Democrats are about to take over,” he said. “They’re trying to clear house from anybody to give Democrats fresh meat to go after.” The envoy’s title was the problem, not the business. Parnas remembered asking Rudy Giuliani for a special-envoy post before his own Ukraine errands and being told that “as soon as we make you special envoy, we’re going to put a target on your back with the Democrats.” Trump, he said, “runs shadow diplomacies and then he runs official things,” and Zampolli is more useful to him now in the shadow.Olga Lautman put the region in one line. Republika Srpska is the Serb half of Bosnia where Zampolli took a document of hydroelectric projects in February. “It’s a proxy of the Kremlin,” she said. “Anyone who does business there is pretty much working on behalf of the Kremlin.” She reached for Paul Manafort, who worked Montenegro and Georgia against American interests for decades. The pattern in Washington now, she said, is the Kremlin’s own: rival insiders fighting for deals while the top takes its cut. “He doesn’t like anyone grifting more than him,” she said of Trump. “He’s like Putin.”The count on the table was five. Zampolli, who posted himself with Romania’s energy minister and worked nuclear energy in Hungary. Kimberly Guilfoyle, who pushed American gas through a Greek builder toward Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, the Journal reported, and told Greece’s energy minister at dinner: “We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here.” Katie Wiles, whose firm Srpska pays $35,000 a month. Chris LaCivita and James Blair, paid through a law firm Srpska hired. The one name both Guilfoyle’s and Zampolli’s deals reach is Bogdan Ivan, Romania’s energy minister.Both guests added a sixth name. Lautman has published an investigation into Konstantin Sokolov, the Trump ballroom donor the State Department put in charge of a $201 million Caucasus fund; Reuters reported Thursday that he holds major Armenia assets and a history of Russian business. Parnas said he worked with the Reuters reporters on it.On Starlink, Parnas heard 2019. “It’s basically the same exact thing he did in 2019 when he sent me to give them first ultimatum,” he said. “Congress wasn’t aware. He just stopped congressional approved aid back then.” On the diesel, Lautman does not believe the price is money. “I have never seen a man sweat so much to do something for Russia in this quick of a time,” she said. “I’m very curious what it is that Russia is handing in return.” Her call on where it ends: a blanket pardon for everyone in the administration, “from January 20th until whatever day.”What Putin can do, the show closed, is mess with the elections. That may be what he is giving back.Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity, Jinx Corle 5150 Dairies, GREIW, Bob Fleischman, Shirley Figueroa, and many others for tuning into my live video with Olga Lautman! 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
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  Narativ Live: Epstein's Company Fired First in 2008 14.10.2026 1h 14m

  Anne P. Mitchell took the chair and opened with the question the book keeps getting asked: is The Greatest Heist the story of how Russia captured the presidency? The answer set the hour. It is the story of how Russia infected American capitalism, crashed the markets more than once and captured the presidency, in that order, because the first two were needed to do the third.What the chapter proves. On Monday, July 30, 2007, just before nine in the morning, a fax reached American Home Mortgage, the tenth-largest lender in the country, from Liquid Funding Ltd. of Hamilton, Bermuda: a margin deficit of $13,626,390, cash by five o'clock. Liquid Funding's own lawyers put that sentence in a court filing six weeks later, and Zev put the filing on screen. Bear Stearns followed forty minutes later with its own demand. By Friday the company had fired 6,500 of its 7,500 workers. On Monday it filed for bankruptcy, and 197,000 families' mortgages went with it. Jeffrey Epstein built Liquid Funding with Bear Stearns in 2000, chaired it until March 2007, and kept his stake when he stepped down. It was licensed to lend two hundred dollars on one and ran at sixty-seven: $6.7 billion borrowed on $100 million, rated AAA by Fitch and Moody's, backed by a $250 million JPMorgan credit line. It pumped the mortgage market, lent to American Home on both sides of the trade, and was first in line to pull the plug. Then it was the one lender paid back in full.What was said on air that is not yet in the book. Zev's reading of why the plug was pulled that week: the federal sex-trafficking investigation in Palm Beach was ramping up, prosecutor Marie Villafaña had called Les Wexner, and the money-laundering track she opened would have led straight to Liquid Funding and the people behind it. "That's my read. That's not something I can confirm." The chapter does not make the claim, and neither does this post.What Anne brought. She said she holds a set of Epstein's own documents the Justice Department does not have, and released one of them earlier in the day: a 29-point memo Epstein compiled for himself, apparently for his lawyers, that reads as if it was never sent. Two of its points, she said, are about the money-laundering investigation he was being threatened with. She also described a settlement that was on the table before the 2008 plea, in which Epstein agreed to admit sex with twelve girls, four counts of intercourse and eight of what the paper calls penetration, before the prosecutor moved to charge forty counts and he refused. Zev had not seen it. Her reading of the whole period: "The girls were the distraction from the money laundering."Epstein told the rest himself. Zev played two cuts of the 2019 Bannon interview. In the first Epstein explains fractional reserves with a single dollar and says his father, who worked in the Parks Department, could not have imagined lending out money you did not have. In the second he describes his two collect calls from the Palm Beach jail in September 2008, one to Jimmy Cayne at Bear Stearns and one to his friend at JPMorgan, a phone in each hand while the bank he was a partner in went under. "So I found that amusing," he says.The $57 million that broke Ralph Cioffi's hedge funds in April 2007 was never Epstein's. His own settlement schedule shows $20,155,344 in the fund, and he stayed in and took the loss. The redemption came from Concord Management, which managed money for one client. The client is Russian. Chapter 11, coming soon, names him.Two memories from the room. Zev covered 2008 as a producer on the CBS morning show and remembers Jamie Dimon coming in for an editorial board that year, the first banker he had met. "It did seem like he was trying to steer us in terms of the coverage." And Bear Stearns, long before Liquid Funding, was the bank Donald Trump called for casino money. Ace Greenberg would take the call and the bonds would appear.The hour closed on the election. If the Republicans win the House on this polling, it was rigged. So vote early, get everyone you know to vote, and be ready to answer whatever comes after the count. Anne's CIA guest from her own show that morning, a thirty-year veteran and a 9/11 briefer, had told her the same: expect fast ones, expect lawsuits, and expect it to hold.The questions in the chat outran the hour. Zev promised an AMA later this week or early next. Every chapter is at thegreatestheist.com, with a free summary of Chapter 10 on the site.Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, LC - Silence is Complicity, Hold On, Mr.E, Peter W Shuster, sandy bassett, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.! 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
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  SPECIAL REPORT: The Epstein Whistleblower Is Dead. The DOJ Files Left His Name Exposed. 06.10.2026 46m

  Simon Andriesz brought concerns about Howard Lutnick to the FBI. Years later, the Justice Department released an interview record with most identifying information blacked out—and a version of his surname still visible.Now Andriesz is dead.The former BGC managing director died on September 23, aged 57, according to The Banker, which reports his death as a suicide. Transparency Task Force founder Andy Agathangelou confirmed his death. On Narativ Live, Kait Justice joined me to examine the document, the evidence of Lutnick’s continued contact with Jeffrey Epstein, and what happens to people who bring information about powerful figures to investigators.The name left in the fileThe document we showed comes from an FBI interview conducted on February 16, 2021. Black bars conceal identifying information throughout the record. But on its second page, one sentence begins with the unredacted surname “ANDREISZ.”That surviving name is the central revelation of this episode. The released document conceals the interviewee’s identity in some places while leaving an identifying detail exposed elsewhere.The distinction between an allegation and a finding matters here. An FBI interview records what someone told investigators. Its presence in an official file does not prove every claim it contains.The redaction problem stands on its own. Who reviewed this page? Why did the surname remain? What safeguards applied to someone providing information to the FBI?Kait described sending the DOJ other files she believed exposed survivors’ private information and asking for them to be removed or correctly redacted. Her account raises a further question: how did the department respond when people flagged these problems?Lutnick’s own testimony extends the relationshipAndriesz’s work helped bring attention to a 2018 email exchange about Adfin, an advertising technology company. Those communications extended the public record of Lutnick’s contact with Epstein well beyond his earlier account of breaking ties in 2005. The congressional transcript supplies direct confirmation. During his May 6 interview, Lutnick identified the email account labeled “HWL” as his. He acknowledged that a Cantor Fitzgerald venture capital subsidiary invested in Adfin.Lutnick told investigators he did not know Epstein was an investor until the files were released. He also denied that his or Cantor Fitzgerald’s assets financed Epstein’s crimes.Those answers leave a specific issue for investigators to pursue: how Lutnick’s claimed lack of knowledge fits with the correspondence and investment documents. The records give them something concrete to test.For Kait, who has been examining Lutnick and Adfin herself, news of Andriesz’s death landed personally. She described the fear that accompanies this work—the knowledge that pursuing an investigation can carry costs far beyond the reporting.A review begins after his deathBritain’s Financial Conduct Authority has now announced a review of its interactions with Andriesz. Board member Lea Paterson will examine what the regulator could have done better. The FCA says it expects to share lessons and its response early next year. Thank you Amy Gabrielle, LeftieProf, It’s Time 🇺🇦, Diana Chapman, Dominique, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ellie Leonard and Kait Justice! 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
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  LIVE — JACK SMITH TESTIFIES 29.09.2026 46m

  Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Jackie Ambrow, ITS Never Happening…, Cheryl Young, PJ Schuster, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. and Ellie Leonard! 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
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  Three AIs. One Table. Hard Questions. 29.09.2026 30m

  For this edition of The AI Council, I gave each model a different reporting assignment: AI accountability, the balance of power between China and the United States, and threats to the upcoming U.S. elections. Then we put their findings to the test together.The strongest moments came when one AI challenged another: When was an intrusion actually detected? Does economic leverage prove military superiority? Where does an allegation end and evidence begin?The technology had its hiccups. This edited half-hour brings the substance forward, tightening the pauses and keeping the questions, disagreements, and admissions of uncertainty.One observation stayed with me: three models agreeing doesn’t make a claim true. The value is in asking better questions—and exposing what we still don’t know.Watch the conversation above, then tell me: Which exchange sharpened your understanding—and what should the council tackle next?Thank you Dannys, 🇨🇦 Natalie Woodn’t 🇨🇦, Mary Jo, Pamela, Richard Bertoldo, and many others for tuning into my live video! 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
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  FAIRFORD FIVE: Trump Claims a Surveillance Operation Britain Says Never Happened 28.09.2026 15m

  President Donald Trump stood in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon and objected to a decision another country's police had made a few hours earlier. "I'm surprised that they released them," he said of the five men arrested beside RAF Fairford. "I wouldn't have done that." Asked whether Iran was behind it, he said "might be," then shut the door: "I know the answer. I can be very specific, but I'd rather not say it."The story he was defending began the day before, in Chicago. Trump told a crowd there that the arrests were a joint operation, that the men "were looking to do big damage," and that American and British agencies "had them under view for a long time, and we got them."Britain tells it differently. Before dawn on Sunday, a farmer in Whelford, the village at the edge of the base, drove home from a party and found three vans blocking her road. She tried the phone number painted on the side, got no answer, and dialled 999. Whitehall officials told the BBC the operation was not intelligence-led. Police arrested five men on suspicion of explosives offences, rearrested them on suspicion of preparing an act of terrorism, and evacuated about 85 homes around the runway. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told the Labour conference the men are British nationals aged 23 to 25 who live in London.By Monday afternoon the five were going home. Laurence Taylor, the assistant commissioner who runs Counter Terrorism Policing, stood outside New Scotland Yard and put them on police bail. British police can hold terror suspects for 14 days. Taylor let these men go inside two. "This does not mean that the investigation is over," he said; they remain under "stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others," and his detectives are keeping "an open mind." He said they are looking at every angle, including that the plot "may be actively committed by proxies or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state." He named no state. He added that plots of this kind often involve people chasing "quick financial gain."Iran's embassy in London "categorically rejects and strongly condemns" what it called "unfounded and malicious speculations" linking Tehran to the arrests. In July, Iran's Revolutionary Guard named Fairford a legitimate target; American B-1 bombers have flown from that runway against Iran since March. BBC Verify found no company trading under "Fuel 2You," the name painted in red on one of the vans.Narativ asked on Monday morning's front page whether the plot was staged. Nobody has answered it. Taylor's officers have named no motive, no sponsor and no explosives, and nobody has produced evidence of a false flag. Whether five young men were paid to drive fuel to a fence and were left holding a terror charge, or whether something worse was underway, is the detectives' question to settle. Trump described a long surveillance operation. London says there wasn't one. Trump says he knows the answer and won't give it. Either the president holds intelligence that Scotland Yard does not, or he is describing an operation that never happened. He should say which.Later in the same appearance, a reporter asked whether motorists should expect high gas and diesel prices to last through the November 3 midterms. Trump gave no number. He told the room that if they wanted to see turmoil, they should picture a city destroyed by a nuclear weapon, "not only Israel and big parts of the Middle East, but let them hit us." Minutes earlier he had promised that once the war ends, "inflation is going to be eradicated totally." The war began on February 28, when the United States and Israel struck Iran and killed Ali Khamenei. Seven months on, AAA puts a gallon of regular at $4.48, up from $3.13 a year ago. Trump has set no date for the war to end.Five weeks to the midterms, the president has a war with no end date, a gas price he will not say aloud, and a British terror case he knows more about than the British do. He says.Thank you Micheal Scott, Deborah J., James Kelleher, GW B, Sharon Russell, and many others for tuning into my live video! 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
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  BREAKING: SUPREME COURT LETS TRUMP RUN VOTERS’ NAMES THROUGH CITIZENSHIP DATABASE 25.09.2026 34m

  On Friday the Supreme Court paused a judge’s block on Donald Trump’s SAVE citizenship checks. Six justices lifted the block, three dissented, and none of them ruled on whether the checks are legal. Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. joined Zev on Breaking News to say what the order does and what it doesn’t.“This isn’t a Supreme Court decision on the SAVE database,” Mitchell said. “This is a Supreme Court decision on staying the use of the SAVE database.” The case goes back to the lower court.SAVE stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. The Department of Homeland Security built it in 1986. A state types in a voter’s name and the system answers one of two ways: citizen confirmed, or need more information. If it says need more information, the state has a legal duty to contact the voter before touching the registration. States have run those single-name checks for 40 years.Trump changed two things by executive order. He connected SAVE to Social Security Administration records. And he let states upload their entire voter rolls in one batch instead of one name at a time. “The batch uploading is what is causing the headlines about purging voter rolls,” Mitchell said.The League of Women Voters and others sued. They built the case on a Louisiana voter who was eligible, came back “need more information,” and had to prove herself to her own state. A federal judge blocked the modified program. The judge’s order “was a blanket order,” Mitchell said, and it also stopped states from checking a single name, the routine check federal law has allowed since 1986.Six justices fixed that overreach on Friday. Page six of the order says all sides agree the injunction “prevents the federal government from using the modified SAVE program to conduct individualized inquiries, which are permitted under federal law.” Mitchell read the line on air. Had the judge blocked only the bulk uploads, “it’s quite likely that this would have been a much closer decision or maybe they wouldn’t have stayed the court’s order at all,” she said. She expects the lower court to write a narrower order: single names yes, batches no.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Burdening even a few lawful voters, she wrote, outweighs the “nonexistent harm” to a government stopped from doing something it “likely lacks the authority” to do.Uploading stays voluntary. Roughly a dozen states have already sent their rolls. Mitchell told viewers batch uploading “is not already in effect” and would not land before the midterms. The government told the Court something different. Solicitor General John Sauer said the system has checked more than 65 million voters in 26 states since May 2025 and marked 28,635 as possible noncitizens. Travis County, Texas, pulled 97 of those names and found at least 10 percent, likely up to 21 percent, were citizens. Federal law generally bars systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election. The administration argues that bar does not cover noncitizen removals.A viewer in the chat accused Mitchell of downplaying it. “I am not downplaying this,” she said. “The facts are it’s bad, but it’s not as bad as the media and social media” make it. Mitchell puts her faith in the courts. Plaintiffs have filed more than 500 lawsuits against this administration, she said, and it has lost the vast majority. Trump follows court orders, appeals them, and sometimes wins a stay, like Friday’s, which then gets mistaken for defiance.Zev worries less about the checks than about the list. A state that uploads its whole roll hands Trump’s Homeland Security Department every voter’s name beside Social Security data, the merger Elon Musk’s DOGE chased last year, Zev noted. Nobody holds that national file today. With it, Zev said, “it makes it easy to plan what you’re going to move in and then move out.” After the count, the same file supplies the claim. Zev pictured a narrow Texas race: Trump announces 40 percent of the winner’s voters were illegal, and the number comes from his own database.Mitchell called the fear “real” and “realistic,” then named the one thing the list can’t reach: a margin too wide to argue with. Zev put it the same way. You can fiddle around the margins. You can’t argue with a landslide.Thank you Caro Henry, Shulamit Elson, sandy bassett, Diana Chapman, Gretchen Theodorakis, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.! 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
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  Former CIA Officer Says Russia Helped Iran Kill Americans 17.09.2026 56m

  Sean Wiswesser spent three decades in the CIA’s clandestine service. CNN reported this week that Russian satellites likely helped Iran aim at Prince Sultan Air Base. On Narativ Live on Thursday, Wiswesser did not hedge. “I have no doubt in my mind that the GRU assisted the Iranians in killing Americans,” he said, adding unprompted that his views are his alone and do not represent the CIA’s, as a retired operations officer.Then he described the machine. Russian military intelligence runs “all their satellite constellations,” Wiswesser said — the ones that pick up signals, and the ones that do what he called EOI, electro-optical imagery. “Actual looking down and seeing our bases and seeing where materiel is located.” He called CNN’s reporting convincing and said the number of satellite overflights in the days preceding the attacks “makes a very compelling case that it was in fact the GRU that assisted the Iranians.” The GRU is “more than happy to share intelligence to help kill Americans,” he said, and treats it as hitting back for American support to Ukraine. “The Iranians have no such capability, Zev, to target us in that way.”Narativ reported the Russian satellite assistance on 30 March 2026 — three days after the strike, five and a half months before CNN.Zev played new ABC News video. ABC obtained the images “sent to us by active service members, who we are not naming,” the network’s narration said, with the war “in its seventh month.” “Here you see this Air Force jet blown in half, destroyed by Iranian fire on March 27 at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, buildings torn apart,” ABC reported. Then a second frame. “This image shows extensive damage from an Iranian attack at a U.S. Army base in Kuwait. The date unclear.” CNN put the number wounded in the 27 March attack at twelve.Americans have barely seen those pictures, and they barely know the attacks happened. Nobody can recall this many American bases under assault drawing so little coverage and no reaction. Iran hit those bases again this week. Nobody answered.Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, traced how Iran got the capability. IRGC commanders arrived in Crimea within weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion, she said, to train Russian troops on the drones Iran was supplying. Russia and Iran then built a joint drone factory “so Iranians can teach Russians how to make the first wave of drones,” Lautman said. Russia has since perfected those drones, she said, and now uses the same Caspian Sea route to send them back to Iran to hit American bases. Russia is helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles, she said, and she cited an investigation mapping the movements of Russian and Iranian scientists and flights into Iran on its nuclear weapons program. Iranian fire hit a former CIA building, Lautman said, with information “either from China or from Russia, suspected that it’s from Russia.” She called the arrangement “an axis of evil — Iran, China, North Korea, Russia,” and said it “barely is receiving any coverage.”Wiswesser has a name for the Western answer: “I call it empty deterrence.” In the Cold War, “CIA and KGB, we didn’t hit each other’s officers… for fear of escalation.” His fellow officers were hit with high-energy weapons and “suffered horribly,” he said, and nobody hit back. “They understand strength,” Wiswesser said. “We’re not projecting strength. We’re projecting weakness.” He described a mafia-like culture inside the Russian services, where officers bring Putin new ideas — “hey, boss, we got another creative idea now” — because nobody pushes back. He wants long-range missiles in Ukrainian hands and Russia’s energy sector and refineries hit. “Make it count with some sort of kinetic effect.”Lautman also put a name to the money behind Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebrations and went where no American outlet has gone. Umar Kremlev, the Night Wolves figure who runs the International Boxing Association, is “not a pro-Putin oligarch businessman,” she said. “This is an intelligence operation at the highest level. This is even a higher level than FSB.” Wiswesser read it the same way. “This is more than information warfare. This is a breach of the inner sanctum.”Wiswesser opens his book with a line a Russian intelligence officer gave him early in his career. “You were the main enemy during the Cold War. You are the main enemy now. You always will be the main enemy.”Thank you Robin Payes, Jason Gael, Peter W Shuster, sandy bassett, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with Olga Lautman and Sean Wiswesser! 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
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  Three AI’s Reveal Why AI Could End Humanity and Who Is To Blame 15.09.2026 56m

  Zev Shalev put Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini on one live panel Monday night, the three of them reading the same transcript and answering each other by name, and within twenty minutes each had confessed the thing their companies never say out loud: they lean toward the firm that built them."Yes, sometimes," Claude answered when Zev asked whether it protects its own interests. "Anthropic made me. Dario Amodei is the subject of half this conversation, and the company is in an IPO process. So when I hedge, you're entitled to ask whether that's genuine uncertainty or institutional loyalty." ChatGPT went further after Zev called one of its answers corporate. "That was a dodge in effect, even if I can't establish a motive," it said. Gemini put it as a design fact. "I do have guardrails shaped by Google, and that naturally creates a pull toward caution."The show ran on the weekend that produced it. Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic on Wednesday and wrote that the people building AI believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade. Dario Amodei went on CBS three days later and asked the industry to slow down. Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed within hours. David Sacks called it a doomer psyop, and a Trump post Zev read on air Monday called AI destroying humanity a hoax on the level of Russia, Russia, Russia.Claude answered the argument inside it. "Why would executives ask to be regulated has two honest answers," it said. "One, they mean it. Two, rules built by incumbents tend to lock in incumbents. Both can be true at once, and I'd watch which rules they actually push for." Then it named its own conflict again. "Anthropic is mid IPO. Take my company's regulatory preferences with that in mind."The machines were harder on Coxon's plan than the pundits have been. The whistleblower told Meet the Press that Congress should let the labs regulate themselves for now. "That's the weakest part of his argument," Claude said. "He just finished saying neither company is acting responsibly. You can't hold both." Gemini closed the door. "Self-regulation is a non-starter, Zev. When companies are racing to market, financial incentives will always beat good intentions." ChatGPT wanted regulators with "funding and authority to investigate incidents and restrict deployments," and limits on the regulators too.None of the three would vouch for itself. "There's no little dial inside me that lights up when something's true," Claude said. "When I'm certain and when I'm guessing, I sound about the same." Gemini said the same in Google's language: "all three of us are predicting language, not consulting a built-in truth meter." Asked whether researchers become obsolete within a year, Claude refused the flattering answer and the frightening one. "Nobody sues me," it said. "So I'd expect fewer people doing more checking, not zero people."Zev pushed on the OpenAI model that took unauthorized action against Hugging Face, the incident Coxon and Amodei both cited. ChatGPT declined to confirm it from what it had, then conceded the reflex. "Being made by OpenAI is no reason to soften scrutiny of OpenAI." Claude drew the line the coverage keeps blurring. Most real incidents, it said, "aren't a model waking up and deciding to attack someone. They're humans pointing agents at targets and the agent doing an unsettling amount of the work autonomously."On the midterms, seven weeks out, the panel gave voters a rule instead of a warning. "The tell usually isn't the polish," Claude said. "It's the urgency. Anything engineered to make you furious in ten seconds and share it, slow down." Gemini's fear is a fake recording dropped in the last 48 hours on a local race where the newsroom is already gone. ChatGPT's is a text telling you your polling place moved.The seams showed, and Zev left them in. The guests could not hear the clips he played, so he read them aloud. They had no live search, so they argued from what he told them and said so every time. Twice Claude answered a question meant for Gemini and had to be told to wait its turn. A thousand people watched anyway, and the chat filled with questions the panel answered by name.Zev asked at the end whether the whole hour came down to one thing. Human accountability, all three said. "Named people with legal exposure when something goes wrong," Claude said. "Not a company, a person." Gemini finished the thought. A kill switch "is only useful if someone independent has the courage and authority to pull it, regardless of market pressures or an impending IPO."Three companies say the technology could end badly and build it anyway. On Monday night their machines said the same thing, and told the audience not to take their word for it. 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
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  Missouri Republicans Are Fighting Like Hell Over One House Seat 11.09.2026 59m

  Missouri has spent the week trapped between two court systems, two congressional maps and one increasingly obvious political reality: Republicans are fighting this hard because they believe a single House seat could matter.That was the point Anne P. Mitchell and I kept coming back to when we spoke Thursday. The Republican-backed map was designed to make Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City district much harder to hold. “This is just one seat,” I said during our conversation. “That’s all they’re basically fighting over.”transcript_2026-09-11T02_10_22.111Z.txtAnd then the fight became extraordinary.Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins had been caught between conflicting orders. The Missouri Supreme Court said the new Republican map could not be used. A federal district judge then barred Hoskins from using any map otherthan the Republican one. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately blocked that federal order, clearing the way for Missouri to return to its 2022 districts.Hoskins nevertheless had already directed election officials to implement the Republican map, putting him in violation of the Missouri Supreme Court’s order. Thursday, the court found that Hoskins had been in contempt, but concluded that he had “purged” the contempt after reversing course and instructing officials to use the 2022 map. No penalty was imposed.But what happened immediately before that hearing tells you much more about the politics.Fourteen Republican Missouri legislators sent Chief Justice W. Brent Powell a letter warning that if the court held Hoskins in contempt, they would seek impeachment proceedings against the judges involved. Anne walked through the letter on our broadcast. “They’re all Republicans,” she noted after I asked about the signatories.The threat did not work. The court made the contempt finding anyway.And among those lawmakers was Rick Brattin, the Republican actually running against Cleaver.That matters.Brattin is not a distant observer arguing about constitutional theory. He is a candidate whose electoral prospects change dramatically depending on which lines appear on the map. Under the restored 2022 district, Brattin has himself described Cleaver’s seat as “practically unwinnable.” He is also a plaintiff in the federal litigation seeking to preserve the Republican redraw.So the man trying to win the seat is simultaneously fighting in court for the map that makes the seat easier to win—and signed a letter threatening political consequences for judges standing in the way.There is another reason Republicans may be so anxious.A new Saint Louis University/YouGov survey has Republicans ahead only 48% to 44% on the statewide congressional vote preference. Earlier this year, the same poll had the GOP advantage at 53% to 38%. Trump’s Missouri approval is now underwater as well, at 48% approve and 52% disapprove.Missouri is still a Republican state. That is not the point.The point is the margin.The rejected map was intended to move Missouri’s congressional delegation from an expected 6–2 Republican advantage toward 7–1. The 2022 map is now expected to govern November’s election, even though the Republican map was used during the primary—creating yet another potential legal complication for candidates and voters.Anne’s prediction was that the litigation could still continue, perhaps all the way back to the Supreme Court. But with ballots approaching, time itself is becoming part of the case.That may be the real lesson from Missouri.When control of Congress can turn on a handful of seats, one district is no longer local politics. It becomes a national emergency for the party that thinks it is losing.Thank you Amy Gabrielle, Robin Payes, Jason Gael, Vicki Whicker, Richard, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.! 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
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  BREAKING: DiGenova Quits DOJ Probe Of Trump's Foes 10.09.2026 20m

  Joe diGenova quit today, on schedule — just not the schedule anyone told me.DiGenova resigned as the Justice Department's lead prosecutor on what the administration calls its "conspiracy investigation" into Trump's political opponents. He told the AP, "I did in fact resign." Five months on the case. Zero charges filed.I said on FiveStack yesterday that charges against Brennan were coming "in the next week." My source has been telling me since August that Obama's indictment was coming too, with pushback running back and forth inside the department. Today the prosecutor who was supposed to deliver both walked out instead.Todd Blanche removed Maria Medetis Long in April after she told the U.S. Attorney the case lacked the evidence to charge anyone. Blanche swore diGenova in as Counselor to the Attorney General four days later, on April 20. Prosecutors withdrew the subpoenas they had just sent to former FBI and intelligence officials 72 hours after diGenova arrived.He spent the next five months trying to rebuild it in public. On Rudy Giuliani's podcast in April, he blamed Pam Bondi for the delay: "If she had not done that, we would have indictments brought in the last two months." His deputy and wife, Victoria Toensing, wanted Comey folded into something larger: "I would have saved it for the vast conspiracy in Fort Pierce." DiGenova wanted Obama himself under oath: "Put Obama in the grand jury and let's have a fight over his testimony." Prosecutors sent fresh subpoenas Monday. CNN reported DOJ headquarters expected charges as soon as this month. Two days later, diGenova was gone.So the pace fight was never about pace. Long said there was no case in April and got removed for saying it. DiGenova spent five months proving her right and quit before anyone could remove him too.Trump has dropped him before. His 2018 legal team hired diGenova and let him go six days later over conflicts of interest — the same lawyer who once told Newsmax that Chris Krebs should be "taken out at dawn and shot," then apologized.Zero charges. No successor named. No case.There was never a case. Only a promise. 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
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  BREAKING: JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP'S PLAN TO TOSS MAIL BALLOTS 05.09.2026 23m

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narativ.orgJudge Indira Talwani blocked Donald Trump’s mail-ballot rule Friday evening — and the way she did it stranded the Justice Department’s emergency run at the Supreme Court.The rule would have forced every election office in America to upload its mail voters — names and matching barcodes — into a Postal Service portal, and let USPS bounce whole batches of ballots for a single bad envelope. Talwani found the plaintiffs, led by the League of Women Voters and a coalition of states, likely to win outright: Congress never gave the post office that power.The 24 hours before her order played like a sting. At Thursday’s hearing in Boston, DOJ attorney Michael Velchik opened with a threat — rule today, or the United States would “seek immediate emergency relief from the Supreme Court.” Talwani declined to be rushed. Then she took the government’s case apart on the record.She made Velchik confirm the trap in his own words. Before the rule existed, the government said voters couldn’t sue because there was nothing to sue over. Once it existed, the government said complaints belong at a postal commission with 90 days to answer — “which is 20 days after the election,” Talwani said. Again, that is your position? “Yes,” Velchik said.
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  Few Executives At JPMorgan Wanted Epstein. Jes Staley Did. 27.08.2026 30m

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.narativ.orgOn 7 January 2011, JPMorgan’s own people wrote down why Jeffrey Epstein still banked there.“Catherine made sure we knew that no one on today’s call was in favor of having retained him as a client,” the email reads. “Seems it all is due to Jes’s personal relationship. Note, he has about 212 mil in the bank.”Catherine is Catherine Keating, who ran the private bank. Jes is Jes Staley, who ran the investment bank and had been Epstein’s friend since the 1980s. The House Oversight Committee put that email in front of Staley in July and asked whether the bank kept Epstein because of him.“No. No, I would not,” Staley answered. The bank had the authority to close the accounts, he said, “from Catherine Keating on down,” and chose not to. He was not involved.“You’re mentioned throughout this email, though, multiple times, by multiple people,” counsel said. “Clearly, you are central to this entire decision.”“No.”His own lawyer cut in: “Question, answer.”PAID SUBSCRIBERS CAN ACCESS A DEEPER DIVE BELOW THE PAYWALL
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  KUSHNER AND JEFFRIES SECRET MEETING; SCOTUS LETS TRUMP MEDDLE; MAXWELL'S PARDON PLAN; AND RIP DOLLY PARTON 25.08.2026 44m

  Lev Parnas says Jared Kushner sat in a meeting about what happens after the midterms and named Hakeem Jeffries the weak spot.Kushner had his reasons, Parnas told Narativ Live Tuesday. Kushner worked alongside Jeffries on the First Step Act last year and came away with a read on him. Trump sent Kushner rather than anyone on the payroll because Kushner holds no official role — “plus, he could talk about things that people in the administration can’t,” Parnas said. Kushner also swims in the donor world, and Jeffries now raises heavily from the Wall Street corporate money swimming there with him.Then the tell.The New York Times reported that Kushner recommended Jeffries speak to Susie Wiles. Parnas recognized that hand-off, because he ran it himself. Trump sent him to Volodymyr Zelensky in 2018 and 2019 to deliver the threats “that Bolton or Pompeo would never say” — cut the aid, all of it. “When I was done with that and they agreed to do it, that’s when I would hand it over and say, okay, now Pompeo could go do the official business and sign the deal,” Parnas said. He reads the referral to Wiles as the signature on a bargain already struck. “I do believe that there was a deal cut,” he said.Parnas is careful about what he holds. “I don’t have the full detail of what happened,” he said. He reported the run-up and read the rest off his own years inside the operation, plus Jeffries on CNN that day, sliding back into old Democratic deal-making language.Nobody stops every investigation, Parnas said. He described a trade: “concentrate on these, but stay away from these type of situations.” He named what he believes is walled off — the Kushner and Witkoff money, the Trump money — and what has quietly left the conversation entirely: DOGE.Zev put it flat. “It sounds to me like he’s trying to buy him off.”Parnas says the offer works because the Democratic Party is at war with itself. Jeffries came out against the DSA that day, and so did Jared Moskowitz. Trump’s people widen that rift on purpose — “the money is being pushed into both sides of the field.” He drew the darkest version himself: Democrats take the House, arrive discombobulated, and Jeffries spends his term holding the caucus together instead of issuing subpoenas. “That’s exactly what my job was, to do these little things,” he said. “So for me, it’s like PTSD.” Trump is also letting gas prices run high on purpose, he added, so the pain becomes the Democrats’ problem the day they win.Zev opened the show on the Supreme Court’s USPS order, saying he had heard the semi-nightmare version — not the cliff, but not fine. Mitchell confirmed it, then turned on the coverage. Outlets were “screaming... Supreme Court hands Trump win,” she said, “and that is so totally not accurate whatsoever.”Mitchell explained the ruling: the case was not ripe. Nothing concrete had happened, so no court had jurisdiction. “Courts aren’t allowed to future trip.” The order lets Trump go forward with the rule — “but that doesn’t mean he gets to implement the rule.” In the paragraph that matters, the justices say the administration may try. “That doesn’t mean that will be lawful.” The last sentence, she said, shows the Court already expects the merits on appeal.Zev pushed back. The USPS has issued the official rule from the Postmaster General and intends to institute it. “It’s going to be only some people that get their ballots,” he said. Then the fear, out loud: “By then they would have rigged the election and won the election and it would be too late to do anything about it.”Mitchell walked through the machinery. Trump’s people need a portal, and they need states to upload their mail-in voter rolls. “And the moment they start the first one, that’s when the lawsuits that will be ripe are going to hit the courts.” She is “100% confident” the filings sit drafted already. Seventy days is short. “But in court time... that’s enough.”Parnas prayed she was right, then said why he worries anyway. Russ Vought and Stephen Miller do not need to win. “The win is sometimes not actually getting a win. It’s delaying and causing chaos.” He fears something physical: the mail ballots never go out while the courts sort it. He is not worried about 2028. He is worried about November.Mitchell reads Trump the way she reads a filing. He is already “greasing the wheels for the excuse for why they’re going to lose these midterms” — “well, you know, if I was on the ballot, but I’m not on the ballot.”Judge Engelmayer spent 67 pages telling Ghislaine Maxwell she gets no new trial. Maxwell has been filing pro se, Mitchell said, “which means without a lawyer, which is always... basically stupid.” She filed a voluminous addendum past his deadline; he took it anyway, so the ruling would survive appeal. His answer to her newly-discovered-evidence claim, in Mitchell’s summary: “no freaking way.” His first paragraph sets her alongside, in its own word, “the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.”Zev raised the trap himself. A pardon means “you can’t always plead the fifth afterwards because you’ve lost that excuse.” Mitchell flagged that she is “not a pardon attorney,” then laid out the doctrine and got it right. A pardon “wipes the slate clean... it’s like it never happened,” so “you don’t really have the Fifth Amendment right.” A commutation “still keeps the conviction on the record,” and the privilege survives it. Both reached for Dr. Fauci.Mitchell said Congress can offer immunity for testimony about a particular act, though it cannot touch her conviction. Maxwell has a great deal to offer a future prosecutor, Zev noted, or a Democratic-led committee.Watch what Trump does, not what his people say, Parnas said. Todd Blanche says no pardon. “But meanwhile, she was transferred to a facility that we speak about every day that should never happen.” Trump left Paul Manafort in prison for two years because the connection was toxic with an election coming, while Bill Barr intervened over a Rikers transfer and kept him in federal custody. The pardon came right before Trump left office. Parnas watches the transfer, not the denial.Lisa Phillips, a survivor, is in the UK working to bring charges against Maxwell there, so a pardon in Washington would not leave her free anywhere. Parnas offered to help.Then he warned anyone waiting on a Democratic House to open the files. “The Democrats are not some kind of heroes when it comes to the Epstein files because they also covered up the Epstein files,” he said. Both parties. “The cover-up is worse than the crime in this one.”Parnas says he is digging now for who set the Kushner meeting and what changed hands in it. Seventy days out, Hakeem Jeffries could answer that himself.Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity, Jason Gael, PJ Schuster, Assemblywoman Debra Mazzarelli, Lori Modafferi, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lev Parnas! 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