America votes on Tuesday, and it is getting hard to tell where American interests stop and Russia’s begin. Trump’s policies are almost indistinguishable from Putin’s, and American politics are increasingly resembling the skulduggery that turned the fledgling Russian democracy into a mafia state. Despite all this, hopes remain stubbornly high for this week’s election results, but so are the anxiety levels that something may still unsettle Tuesday’s vote.
Every weekend, we select a few of Narativ’s best reads and views from the week and showcase them here in the Weekly. It’s the perfect weekend catch-up of the news most legacy news media won’t tell you, and as appropriate on Old Hallow’s Eve, this week’s stories pack quite a bit of fright, and a familiar villain.
Pull up a chair.
Jamie Raskin released a 53-page report Monday that calls Donald Trump "an active participant" in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of young women and names Paolo Zampolli, Trump's model scout and until this month his envoy, a likely co-conspirator in the same ring. Narativ has been on Zampolli since June 16, when we called his operation a likely Russian spy cell inside the United Nations; then his thirty years around Russian officials on July 11; then the passports, UN votes and Trump condos traded from inside the American mission in September; then his firing on Oct. 16. Two women told the FBI Epstein found them in the portfolios at Zampolli's agency and the model apartment on Varick Street. Beatrice Keul told committee staff Trump raped her at the Plaza in 1993, and that when she said she could handle her own visa he answered, "No no, my friend Paolo will take care of that." Epstein walked up as Trump stepped away: "I'm Jeffrey, Don's best friend." Todd Blanche flew to Tallahassee to interview Ghislaine Maxwell and cut her off three times when she raised the girl who could place Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Raskin's report never touches the money. The White House says Trump "has been fully exonerated." At the committee's request, Narativ gave staff its Zampolli file. The report does not cite it.
More from the week: “My Friend Paolo Will Take Care of That”: The New Keul Allegation · NEW: Raskin Names Trump and his Fixer in Epstein Probe · Democrats Tie Trump To Epstein But Have Not Made The Case (Yet) · Melania's Shadow: Who Is Paolo Zampolli? · The Spy at the First Lady's Side · A ROADMAP TO CORRUPTION: THE UN TO THE WHITE HOUSE · NARATIV EXCLUSIVE: State Fires Zampolli Without Probing His "Possibly Unlawful" Deals
Benjamin Netanyahu went into Tuesday's vote with his people already rehearsing a "stolen and fake election" line, Haaretz reported, and Likud crews filming Arab voters for a "fraud war room." He lost the first exit polls, took the stage at 3:23 a.m. to claim a majority "among the Zionist public," and by Wednesday noon Likud said the election was "stolen by Arab parties." Israel finished its count: his bloc 53, Gadi Eisenkot 48, the Arab lists 19. Voters gave 67 seats to parties that ran against him. On Thursday Justice Noam Sohlberg told the Shin Bet to look into "foreign funding" behind the Arab turnout; the committee's own director said there was no basis for fraud claims, and the police said they had no evidence. Trump told Axios his endorsement "made a big difference for Bibi" and he would "take a look" at a unity government under Netanyahu. Polymarket is investigating trades that swung to Netanyahu while the TV channels were still revising their exit polls toward him. Eisenkot would govern as Rabin did: a minority government the Arab lists back from outside. President Herzog hands someone the mandate by Nov. 11. The Russia line in Israel's count is Narativ's own record. Bibi's Revenge, our 2021 investigation, chronicled how Netanyahu and Putin, each dreading a Clinton presidency, worked to put Trump in the White House in 2016: the encrypted hotline Putin ran into Netanyahu's home from 2014, George Nader's Red Sea yacht summit of Gulf leaders in 2015, Israel's Psy-Group inside the Trump campaign for most of a year, and Kushner and Flynn working the Russians on a UN vote at Netanyahu's request before Trump took office. We revisited it in March 2024.
More from the week: DEVELOPING: Netanyahu Prepares for Election Loss by Borrowing a Note from Donald Trump · Netanyahu's Likud Calls the Vote Stolen by Arab Parties · BREAKING NEWS: EISENKOT DECLARES VICTORY IN ISRAELI ELECTIONS · Netanyahu Says Israeli Arabs Have Rigged the Election, Highest Turnout in History · Netanyahu Power Grab Ignores Votes of 1.3 Million Arab Israelis; Trump Welcomes Brazilian Fugitive on the Run · Bibi’s Revenge · Revisiting Bibi's Revenge
Lula took 51.8% on Sunday, 4.4 million votes clear, after telling Trump to stay out of Brazil's election and denying visas to two State Department officials who tried: "This country will not accept being anyone's backyard." Flávio Bolsonaro asked the court to annul it. Trump called it "another rigged election." On Tuesday Justice Flávio Dino ordered the Federal Police to find out whether Bolsonaro's campaign took foreign money through the Rockbridge Network, the donor group JD Vance co-founded, with Rebekah Mercer and Peter Thiel as its reported funders. Rockbridge denied any Brazil plans for weeks, then admitted to a Wyoming company, Rockbridge Brazil LLC, filed in May by the staffer who runs Vance's donor relationships. The Mercers owned a piece of Cambridge Analytica in 2016, and Narativ reported the Mercer fortune and its Russian ties the next year. Bolsonaro missed Tuesday's passport deadline, walked into Argentina at 10:50 that night with no record of his departure, and landed in Miami by 9:30 the next morning on visas the State Department had said would be granted. Trump called the family "fine people." The same Sunday night, Serbia's leaderless students beat Aleksandar Vučić after 14 years.
More from the week: LULA BEATS TRUMP’S MAN — AND SERBIA’S STRONGMAN FALLS THE SAME NIGHT · NEW ANALYSIS: Lula told Trump to stay out — that's how he won · Flávio Bolsonaro Took His Father's Road to Trump's Florida · FiveStack LIVE: Lula Beats Trump's Man, Raskin Names Zampolli
A Washington grand jury refused Tuesday to indict Cassidy Hutchinson. So Todd Blanche brought the week's charges against Trump's enemies without one. His prosecutors charged James Comey a third time by information, a prosecutor's own paper, filed ten years to the day after the leak it alleges. They charged two former FBI officials by complaint, and Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui refused their midnight addendum with no signature: "It's never been done before." The day Comey was charged, Judge Jesse Furman ruled the department had illegally fired his daughter Maurene, who prosecuted Epstein. FBI agents in tactical gear searched Stephen Cloobeck's Beverly Hills mansion over Eric Swalwell. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries asked Judge James Boasberg to bar Blanche from demanding that states strike voters through the count; DHS cut its Nevada list of 15,903 "possible noncitizens" to 185 on review, and Nevada's staff found all 185 appeared to be citizens. Blanche sued to stop Alaska certifying its Senate race before a vote was cast, and Alaska's own Republican government told the judge the suit "has no legal basis." Trump asked for Mary Peltola to be prosecuted, then flew to South Carolina, where Darline Graham, his pick for her late brother's seat, is tied at 48. Tina Peters told 60 Minutes she will do "whatever needs to be done." Her lawyer said how: get the ballots, then recount. Scott MacFarlane, back from Michigan, told Narativ Live Friday to read the money and the plane, not the polls: Democrats are putting money into Mississippi, and Trump flies to Louisiana on Monday.
More from the week: Justice Department Charges Comey Again, Raids Swalwell Donor's Mansion · BREAKING: Democrats File Emergency Order to Restrain Blanche · SENATE COLLAPSE: Trump Props Up Graham's Sister; Alaska May Decide Senate; 74% Chance Dems Win · Peters tells 60 Minutes she'll do whatever it takes · FiveStack: Five Days to Go—and the Fight Over the Result Has Begun · ELECTION ROUNDUP WITH SCOTT MACFARLANE · ELECTION SHOCKER: Mississippi and Louisiana Are In Play
Melania Trump, the White House says, got Russia and Ukraine to stop shooting at Oleshky, a town of about 2,000 people in occupied Kherson, for six days. Russia set fire to an apartment block in Kharkiv with a drone the same night and wounded a 4-year-old. Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Hudson Institute, did not mention Oleshky; he talked about the Patriot interceptors Washington still holds and the speed cap on Ukraine's military Starlink that Elon Musk left in place after Trump asked him to lift it. The Pentagon is moving another Patriot battery from Texas to the Middle East for a possible round against Iran after Nov. 3. Finland's and Norway's leaders called Putin for 90 minutes and got nothing. Ukraine, Russia and the United States will send negotiators to Abu Dhabi in November, and nobody calls it peace talks. The Financial Times found Donald Trump Jr. in a Mongolian hunting camp in August with Umar Kremlev, the Kremlin-connected boxing boss who paid hundreds of thousands toward his Bahamas wedding party; the two men avoided the camera. Hours after the FT published, Putin said Russia is "exploring the possibility of collaboration with American partners" in the Arctic. Jacob Kaarsbo drove 11 donated cars into Kyiv and found a capital that calls America's diesel deal a betrayal. On Friday Sean Wiswesser, a former CIA chief of station, told Narativ Live: "It's embarrassing for my country not to show more resolve." The record behind his line: on Oct. 9 the Treasury licensed Russian diesel after a Trump–Putin call; on Oct. 16 Trump waived every provision of the Graham sanctions law he had signed four weeks earlier, in an order with no end date that never says Ukraine; on Oct. 21 the Treasury cleared the sale of Lukoil's international arm; and on Friday Reuters reported Pentagon officials telling Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to stop "poking" Russia, the morning Sergey Lavrov landed in Atlanta for the G20.
More from the week: Melania Gets a Ceasefire; Ukraine Still Waits for Patriots · Trump's Son Dodged Cameras With Kremlin Boxing Boss · Bucha Mayor Trolls Trump's Diesel Deal With Putin
Two U.S. officials told CNN the forces are in place to hit Iran's energy plants, military sites and nuclear facilities within 96 hours of Trump's order, and he wants the midterms out of the way first. On Oct. 8 he had posted that he would not attack Iran before them. In Perry, Georgia, with gas at $4.29 against $3.06 a year ago, he said his staff begged him not to mention it, then: "I don't give a damn, I'm gonna say it: We're making a frickin fortune." Netanyahu wanted the strike before his own vote, an Israeli security source told CNN, and Israel's army chief, Eyal Zamir, warned the Americans it could force the election to be postponed. Trump keeps crude up without a shot fired by keeping a tanker lane under threat. Who collects: producers, traders positioned for a November shock, and the drillers he named from the stage. The driver at the pump pays the extra $1.23. The strike waits on two ballots, and the oil price waits on the strike.
More from the week: Melania Gets a Ceasefire; Ukraine Still Waits for Patriots · Netanyahu Power Grab Ignores Votes of 1.3 Million Arab Israelis; Trump Welcomes Brazilian Fugitive on the Run
That's The Weekly. Back Monday with the board.
PS: Monday's board is the last before America votes. Tuesday night we count it live.
