Kash Patel sat five hours in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, and a Republican did the first damage. John Kennedy of Louisiana asked why the bureau's June hiring memo mentions bestiality at all: "The person who recommended it, why didn't you just say, what planet did you parachute in from?" Patel said the change protects trafficking victims forced into it. Zev read the memo on air: a candidate who paid a prostitute fewer than three times, more than ten years ago, stays in the running, and bestiality or animal cruelty clears if the applicant was under 18. "That doesn't describe somebody being a victim at all," Ellie Leonard said. Cory Booker: "We don't have an FBI director. We have a lackey here. And frankly, he's not even a good lackey." "They're not even good dictators," Lev Parnas said. "They're comical fools."
Sheldon Whitehouse asked about 37 pages the FBI still has not turned over — the agents' handwritten notes from interviewing a woman who told them Donald Trump assaulted her at 14 or 15, Whitehouse said. Patel: "I don't know what you're referencing. We've produced three and a half million pages." Ellie has worked that file, Jane Doe 4, in her own reporting: the Justice Department first released only the one interview in which the woman refused to discuss Trump, she said, and the agents' notes never came at all. "The head of the FBI and the Attorney General of the United States don't know about these 37 pages," Ellie said. "And yet Reddit knows about them. Substack knows about them. The Post and Courier knows about them. Katie Phang knows about them." Her verdict on the bureau Patel runs: "They're going to be using the FBI as a padding around Donald Trump to protect him and go after the people who've opposed him."
Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon shared a Washington stage Tuesday and asked Congress to rein in artificial intelligence; Barack Obama and Kamala Harris asked the same that morning. Donald Trump called the danger "a HOAX" on Truth Social Monday, and his own June disclosure shows him buying up to $5 million of Nvidia, the company selling the chips. Zev played Google's Gemini from Monday's Narativ Live — "Self-regulation is a non-starter, Zev. Financial incentives will always beat good intentions" — and said the three machines told him not to trust them four or five times in an hour. Ellie found that less reassuring than it sounded: "It's like staring into a bomb, and the bomb's telling you, I'm bad, guys. Don't trust the bomb." She has seen Trump's hoax act before. "It's going to be like COVID all over again. It's a hoax. Don't believe it. But I've got the cure. Come buy my cure."
The Pentagon's inspector general told Congress Monday that Iranian missiles and drones damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings at U.S. bases in eight countries. He priced the war at $33.4 billion through June 30 and wrote that the munitions spending left the stockpile short. Iran hit those bases on Trump's watch, and the outlets cheering his war are not running his own inspector's report: Ground News scores the coverage 70 percent left, 10 percent center, 20 percent right. Zev read it, Ellie passed, the countdown moved on.
Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, read articles of impeachment against War Secretary Pete Hegseth from the House floor just after noon Tuesday, and Zev ran the tape: "Impeaching Peter Brian Hegseth, Secretary of Defense — also referred to as Secretary of War by the administration — for high crimes and misdemeanors." Massie charges Hegseth with waging the Iran war past the 90-day War Powers limit, defying three withdrawal votes, and killing civilians. No Republican co-signed; the House must vote by Thursday, before it leaves until after the midterms; Massie lost his May primary and leaves in January. "I don't agree with Thomas Massie on most things," Ellie said, "but I appreciate that he steps outside of his political party to do this. Yes, impeach Peter Brian Hegseth."
Richard Blumenthal asked Patel to commit that FBI agents stay out of polling places in November. Patel said the bureau "will follow the law if there's a reason to go there." Asked for a pledge, he gave one: "I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies." The answer, Zev said, used to be simple: absolutely not. Not this time. Ellie ran the list from memory: drop boxes pulled out of the ground in Missoula in 2020, voters' helpers arrested for handing out water, mail-in ballots under attack. "He knows that statistically in those locations, those people tend to vote more Democratic," she said, "and he's doing everything in his power to take that right away." Nobody in that hearing room can remove Patel. Voters can, in seven weeks — if they are still on the rolls when they get there. Zev's close: check your registration, and vote early.
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