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.

RASKIN NAMED TRUMP, AND THE MAN WE EXPOSED IN JUNE

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

NETANYAHU LOST THE COUNT AND CALLED IT STOLEN

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 BEAT TRUMP'S MAN, AND BRAZIL OPENED A FILE ON VANCE'S MACHINE

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

BLANCHE LOST A GRAND JURY, SO HE STOPPED ASKING FOR THEM

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 GOT A CEASEFIRE FOR ONE TOWN; PUTIN GOT A HUNTING PARTNER

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

THE IRAN STRIKE WAITS ON TWO ELECTIONS; THE OIL MONEY DOES NOT

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.

Share

Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two words Germany and France had cut from the paper. "Today, we move towards associate membership for Canada," he told the closing press conference of the Canada–EU summit in Montreal on Friday.

Carney, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa released a joint statement that never calls Canada an associate member. Berlin and Paris objected to a title that exists nowhere in the EU treaties, so the EU wrote "ever-closer association" instead. Von der Leyen, who proposed the title in September, repeated it at her closing press conference. Carney went further: a partnership "short of accession, with Canada becoming the European Union's first associate member." He said the two sides would negotiate over the next year.

Berlin and Paris struck the word. They signed the thing itself, line by line.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Scott MacFarlane came back from Michigan with a measure of this election that no poll prints. He told Narativ Live on Friday to watch "where the surrogates and the money are going," because that is "a much better read than polls ever will be."

Republicans are defending ground Trump won by double digits. Trump has flown to South Carolina twice in two weeks, to Kansas and Iowa, and on Monday, MacFarlane said, he lands in Louisiana, where Sen. Bill Cassidy finished third in May's primary and nobody polls the seat.

Democrats are sending their money the other way. The Democrats' Senate Majority PAC put $1.2 million behind Scott Colom, the district attorney challenging Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, and the Republicans' Senate Leadership Fund answered with seven figures two days later. MacFarlane called money "a finite resource, especially 72 hours before the polls open," and said that if Democrats are putting it into Mississippi, "they're seeing something polls can't show."

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

👀 THE FRONT PAGE

🗳️ EISENKOT STILL LIKELY TO TRIUMPH IN ISRAEL

Netanyahu has 53 seats and needs 61. Eisenkot has 48. The Arab lists have 19. The count is complete, and the only majority anyone can build is Eisenkot plus the Arab lists: 67. On Thursday the state started investigating the people who voted for those 19 seats. Justice Noam Sohlberg, who runs the elections committee, told the Shin Bet to look into "improper influence on the elections through foreign funding provided by external actors operating against Israeli interests." He named no country, said he "cannot attest to the substance of these suspicions," and wants an answer within a week. The accusation is Likud's: Qatari money paid for the Arab turnout. The committee's own acting director, Dean Livne, said there was no basis for claims of widespread fraud. The police said they had "no investigative or intelligence evidence" that the election was stolen. Police have held seven people in a vote-buying case tied to Ra'am, found no significant evidence and expect to close it, ynet reported.

Read the full story →

🗳️ THE SENATE: DARLINE GRAHAM IS IN TROUBLE

Donald Trump asked on Wednesday for Alaska's Democratic Senate candidate to be prosecuted. On Thursday he flew to Rock Hill, South Carolina, to prop up Darline Graham. She is Lindsey Graham's sister. She got his seat in July, after he died, on Trump's recommendation. She is tied. The New York Times/Siena poll of 707 South Carolina voters, taken Oct. 19 to 26, has Graham and the Democrat, Annie Andrews, at 48% each. Trump won the state by nearly 18 points two years ago.

Read the full story →

🇧🇷 TRUMP’S TEAM DID TRY INTERFERE IN BRAZIL

The machine that worked American voters for Donald Trump in 2016 has been working Brazil's, and this time its co-founder is the vice president. On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Justice Flávio Dino of Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the Federal Police to find out whether Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign took foreign money through the Rockbridge Network, the donor group JD Vance co-founded, on petitions from Lula's party and a rival right-wing party.

Read the full story →

🧭 THE BIGGER PICTURE

Bolsonaro started the week a senator and the leading candidate for president; he ends it a fugitive on the run in Miami. Netanyahu started the week the all-powerful prime minister of a militarized Israel; by the end of it, the Arabs he detests look poised to end his political career. Trump walked in with a trifecta of power, and he will likely walk out with one. His own, with no real mandate to lead. This is the week, Vladimir Putin’s wildest dreams should come to an end. Brace yourself for the wreckage we will find on the other side.

📺 LIVE TODAY

FiveStack, 3 PM ET

📖 READ THIS

At Narativ, we’ve understood Bibi Netanyahu for a long times. Here’s my piece from 5 years ago.

Share

The machine that worked American voters for Donald Trump in 2016 has been working Brazil's, and this time its co-founder is the vice president. On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Justice Flávio Dino of Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the Federal Police to find out whether Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign took foreign money through the Rockbridge Network, the donor group JD Vance co-founded, on petitions from Lula's party and a rival right-wing party. Bolsonaro landed in Miami the next morning.

Dino signed the order two days after Bolsonaro lost the runoff by 4.4 million votes. He wrote that the signs of foreign interference in the election were growing, and he gave the police a list. First, the dealings attributed to Rockbridge's representatives in Brazil, Tallis Gomes and Pedro Sang, and whether money, services or anything of value reached the campaign. Second, who hired and paid for campaign ads run from foreign accounts. Third, whether internet companies tilted their algorithms. Fourth, Brazil's rare earths and critical minerals, which Dino reminded everyone belong to the state.

Vance co-founded Rockbridge in 2019. Reuters put its budget near $75 million for the 2024 cycle, and Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer are its reported funders. The order names Vance as the co-founder, not as a target. Vance's office said nothing.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

For weeks Rockbridge denied it had any plans for Brazil. Then it admitted it had registered a company called Rockbridge Brazil LLC in Wyoming in May, The Conversation reported from documents Intercept Brasil obtained; the staffer who filed it runs Vance's relationships with donors. Rockbridge says the company never took money, never operated, and that the Brazilians put its name on documents without permission. Sang, named in a document as executive director of the Brazil operation, says the council "was just an idea that never took off." Nine days after an ally wrote a memo on a Brazil-U.S. rare earths partnership, Bolsonaro stood at CPAC in Dallas and offered Brazil's minerals to break America's dependence on China.

Bolsonaro's campaign said it took no foreign money and would not comment on the order. Rockbridge told The Washington Post the Brazilians "made false representations about their relationship with Rockbridge."

Dino put no dollar figure in the order and charged no one. What he did was open the first police file on this network anywhere, as far as The Narativ could find. In 2016 the Mercers owned a piece of Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon was its vice president, and Trump's campaign paid it $6 million to profile 220 million American voters; Narativ reported the Mercer fortune and its Russian ties the next year. Rockbridge's reported funders are Rebekah Mercer and Peter Thiel, Trump phoned into its 2024 donor meeting, and its Brazil plan sold the same kit: donors, content, a council of businessmen around one candidate. Only the name out front changed, and it is a heartbeat from the presidency.

Bolsonaro took his father's road to Florida while the police went to work behind him. He missed the 11 a.m. passport deadline on Tuesday. He left the country that night with no record of his departure, Brazil's federal police said. On Wednesday he landed in Miami on visas the State Department had said would be granted. He faces a money-laundering investigation at home, and he will answer none of it from Miami.

The Federal Police will have Gomes, Sang and the ad buyers in a room long before they get anywhere near Wyoming, and Wyoming will not answer a Brazilian subpoena. The people who put up the money will stay out of reach, which explains why the company is registered in Wyoming.

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Netanyahu has 53 seats and needs 61. Eisenkot has 48. The Arab lists have 19. As we’ve reported since election night, the only majority anyone can build is Eisenkot plus the Arab lists: 67. This remains our analysis even as Bibi Netanyahu claims foreign interference should annul those 19 seats.

Justice Noam Sohlberg, who runs the elections committee, told the Shin Bet to look into "improper influence on the elections through foreign funding provided by external actors operating against Israeli interests." He named no country, said he "cannot attest to the substance of these suspicions," and wants an answer within a week. The accusation is Likud's: Qatari money paid for the Arab turnout.

The committee's own acting director, Dean Livne, said there was no basis for claims of widespread fraud. The police said they had "no investigative or intelligence evidence" that the election was stolen. Police have held seven people in a vote-buying case tied to Ra'am, found no significant evidence and expect to close it, ynet reported.

Three roads are left, and the likeliest one could usher in a government that returns Israel to the hope that existed under assassinate prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Here are the three likeliest roads ranked in order.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Road one: a minority government the Arab lists vote for without sitting in it. That is how Rabin governed after 1992: Labor and Meretz had 56, five Arab-party members backed him from outside, never at the table, and Oslo passed on their votes. Eisenkot’s right-wing partners will not sit with the Arab lists, and he does not need them to. The Joint List said Wednesday it would support a government from outside, without ministries: Eisenkot governs with 48 and the 19 behind him. If he takes Rabin’s road, Israel gets back the one kind of government that ever reached for peace.

Road two: Netanyahu pulls eight across. The only real offer went the other way: United Torah Judaism, an ultra-Orthodox party with seven seats, will offer Eisenkot the premiership in exchange for a draft-exemption law. That is 55, six short. If the party gave Bibi the same offer, he could deliver a government of 61 seats. You can mix and match a number if smaller parties to build a coalition on either side but its complicated and more likely for Eisenkot that Bibi.

Road three: a unity government. Netanyahu and Eisenkot together would have 101 seats, and it works only if Netanyahu steps aside. President Isaac Herzog said Wednesday that “we must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections.” He gets the results next Wednesday and must hand someone the mandate by Nov. 11.

The Telegraph reported Thursday, from unnamed Iranian officials, that Iran tried to interfere in Israel’s vote and plans to do the same in the U.S. midterms; one newspaper, and Sohlberg’s letter names no country.

The fraud claims cut the other way too, Polymarket is investigating suspicious trades on its Israel markets after the odds swung to Netanyahu overnight, while the channels were still revising their exit polls toward him, Bloomberg reported; Quartz puts the pool at $70 million. If the bets moved before the count did, somebody knew which way the count would go. That is what a rig looks like.

Netanyahu cannot get to 61 while those 19 seats count, so everything since Tuesday night has been about making them not count: a complaint with no evidence, a Shin Bet referral, petitions for revotes, a Likud demand that “no Zionist party” deal with Ra’am. The state’s own officials are not playing along. The majority exists. The fight is over whether Israel lets it govern.

Sohlberg’s week runs out as Herzog’s consultations begin, and that is the window. If the Shin Bet comes back with nothing, Eisenkot calls the Joint List and governs on their votes from outside, before the ultra-Orthodox change their minds. If it comes back with something, Netanyahu gets another election, and the campaign is already written.

If Bibi clings to power, it will be fleeting. A vast majority of Israelis voted to get him out of power. They are tired of the war and bloodshed, they are exhausted by the lies and hatred. They - Jews and Arabs alike - are ready for the hope and optimism an Eisenkot government could deliver.

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Donald Trump asked on Wednesday for Alaska's Democratic Senate candidate to be prosecuted. On Thursday he flew to Rock Hill, South Carolina, to prop up Darline Graham. She is Lindsey Graham's sister. She got his seat in July, after he died, on Trump's recommendation. She is tied.

The New York Times/Siena poll of 707 South Carolina voters, taken Oct. 19 to 26, has Graham and the Democrat, Annie Andrews, at 48% each. Trump won the state by nearly 18 points two years ago. Andrews is a pediatrician who has never held office. Thursday's rally is Trump's second in the state in two weeks and his third in three months. A president does not fly to the same safe state three times.

In Alaska he reached for a lawyer instead. The Times reported Wednesday, from a dozen sources, that Democrats recruited a retired teacher from Petersburg named Dan J. Sullivan to run against Sen. Dan Sullivan, so that two Dan Sullivans would be on the ballot, and that Mary Peltola's campaign staff and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were in on it. Peltola's campaign and the committee deny it. The Times says it is generally legal. The second Sullivan got 2.5% in the August primary.

Trump's answer was not a court. He told reporters on Wednesday, before flying to Ohio, that Peltola should be prosecuted criminally for what she did, and called it "voter fraud at the highest level." Gov. Mike Dunleavy ordered a state criminal investigation that night. Attorney General Todd Blanche had already sued on Oct. 23, before a vote was counted, to stop Alaska from certifying the race if Sullivan loses. Alaska's own Republican government told the judge on Monday the suit "has no legal basis." This is the same Blanche who lost a grand jury's vote to indict Cassidy Hutchinson on Tuesday.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Why Alaska? Harvard's Gary King and two colleagues posted a forecast on Oct. 15. It expects Democrats to take 54.1% of the national House vote and a median of 52 Senate seats. If the vote runs two points more Republican than that, they write, the morning-after headline "might read" "Democrats win back control of the House, but the Senate comes down to Alaska." The map explains the travel: where a seat is slipping, he goes himself; where one seat could decide the Senate, he sends Blanche to the courthouse first.

CNN's polls on Thursday have the Democrat, James Talarico, ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton 49% to 43%, outside the 4.2-point margin of error; Abdul El-Sayed ahead in Michigan 49% to 42%; and Maine and Kansas inside the margin. Sen. Lisa Murkowski endorsed a Democrat for governor of Alaska this week while calling Peltola's campaign "a pattern of lies and cover-ups." Seven people familiar with FBI discussions told MS NOW that agents fear being ordered to seize ballots or voting machines after Election Day. Ken Klippenstein reported National Guard units mobilizing in all 50 states to watch drop boxes and polling places; the Pentagon told him it has no such plans. By Thursday morning the Justice Department said FBI and ICE agents will not serve as poll monitors, Reuters reported.

Next week the count in Alaska will be slow, because it is ranked-choice, and Blanche's suit will be sitting in front of a federal judge in Anchorage, waiting for a Sullivan loss. If Peltola wins by less than the second Sullivan's share, the Senate majority will be argued in a courtroom in Anchorage before it is seated in Washington.

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

The Narativ | Know Sooner

Wednesday, October 28, 2026

👀 THE FRONT PAGE

🗳️ ISRAEL COUNT

Benjamin Netanyahu lost the first exit polls and took the stage at 3:23 a.m. to say the right had a majority "among the Zionist public." By noon his party said the election was "stolen by Arab parties" and demanded a police and Shin Bet investigation. In between, the polls changed, not the voters. The night's first exit polls put Likud at 24 seats and Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar at 22, Netanyahu's bloc at 50, Eisenkot's at 52 or 53, the Arab lists at 17 or 18. Eisenkot, the former army chief, took the stage after midnight and said, "We made history." He told Netanyahu, "do not dare use the security of Israel for your needs." By 2:17 a.m. all three channels had revised. Channel 12 put Likud at 27 and Netanyahu's bloc at 52; Kan and Channel 13 called it 51 to 51. Nobody had voted since the polls closed.

Read the full story →

⚖️ GRAND JURY

A federal grand jury in Washington refused Tuesday to indict Cassidy Hutchinson for lying to Congress. The rest of Todd Blanche's cases against Trump's enemies this month never saw a jury, because he stopped asking. Hutchinson was the Jan. 6 committee's witness, the Mark Meadows aide 13 million people watched describe Trump urging a crowd he knew might be armed toward the Capitol. Trump targeted her for it. Career prosecutors doubted they could win it, and the case went to the civil rights division, where Harmeet Dhillon normally handles police violence and voting cases.

Read the full story →

🚀 IRAN

Benjamin Netanyahu walked into Likud headquarters at 3:23 a.m. Wednesday short of a majority on every exit poll and turned his speech to Iran. "Iran is weaker than ever, Israel is stronger than ever," he told the room. Israel and Donald Trump, he said, will end the Iranian threat once and for all. The White House would not discuss "sensitive military plans that may or may not exist."

Read the full story →

🇺🇦 UKRAINE

Melania Trump holds no office. Her one channel to Moscow before this was a letter to Putin last year about children displaced by the war. The White House says she got Russia and Ukraine to stop shooting at one town, and Russia's ombudsman agrees. Everywhere else, Russia kept shooting.

Read the full story →

✈️ BOLSONARO

Flávio Bolsonaro crossed a bridge into Argentina at 10:50 Tuesday night, 11 hours after the deadline Brazil's Supreme Court set for him to hand in his passports. By 9:30 Wednesday morning he was in Miami.

Read the full story →

🧭 THE BIGGER PICTURE

Netanyahu, Bolsonaro and Trump are one movement, and this week it lost at the ballot box and won everywhere else: a visa, a Patriot battery, a 3 a.m. speech, a grand jury it could not bend.

📺 LIVE TODAY

Fivestack with Dean Blundell, 3 PM ET.

Earlier today: Jacob Kaarsbo live From Kyiv

📖 READ THIS

Netanyahu prepared for the loss by borrowing a note from Donald Trump. Read Monday's piece, then watch him use it.

https://www.narativ.org/p/1027-israel

Share

A federal grand jury in Washington refused Tuesday to indict Cassidy Hutchinson for lying to Congress. The rest of Todd Blanche's cases against Trump's enemies this month never saw a jury, because he stopped asking.

Hutchinson was the Jan. 6 committee's witness, the Mark Meadows aide 13 million people watched describe Trump urging a crowd he knew might be armed toward the Capitol. Trump targeted her for it. Career prosecutors doubted they could win it, and the case went to the civil rights division, where Harmeet Dhillon normally handles police violence and voting cases. The jurors returned a no bill, the latest in what NBC called a string of such refusals in cases against people Trump has named as enemies.

The department can take Hutchinson back to another grand jury.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Flávio Bolsonaro crossed a bridge into Argentina at 10:50 Tuesday night, 11 hours after the deadline Brazil's Supreme Court set for him to hand in his passports. By 9:30 Wednesday morning he was in Miami.

On Monday he had said, "I have never thought about leaving the country." Trump's State Department said it would grant him and his family visas before the court's deadline ran out. Nobody has said what kind.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Melania Trump holds no office. Her one channel to Moscow before this was a letter to Putin last year about children displaced by the war. The White House says she got Russia and Ukraine to stop shooting at one town, and Russia's ombudsman agrees. Everywhere else, Russia kept shooting.

The town is Oleshky, in occupied Kherson, where about 2,000 people are left. Russia's and Ukraine's human rights ombudsmen, Yana Lantratova and Dmytro Lubinets, said Wednesday the truce had gone 30 hours without a violation. It runs six days, through Sunday, for food, medicine and an evacuation. The same night, a Russian jet-powered drone set fire to an apartment building in Kharkiv and wounded five people, one of them 4 years old. The White House says the first lady brokered the deal after hearing about the town at a U.N. event last month, and the Kremlin thanked her. Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking at the Hudson Institute the day it was announced, did not mention Oleshky. He talked about the Patriot interceptors Washington still has on hold and the speed cap SpaceX put on Ukraine's military Starlink terminals on Oct. 14, the one Narativ reported Elon Musk left in place after Trump asked him to lift it.

Vladimir Putin took a call Tuesday from Norway's Jonas Gahr Støre and Finland's Alexander Stubb, the first such call from the leader of a Ukraine ally since Emmanuel Macron's in July 2025, and gave them nothing: peace when Russia's interests are "fully and unconditionally taken into account." Støre defended the call Wednesday. He is worried Europe's messages do not reach Putin when the Americans do the talking. Denmark's Mette Frederiksen said Europe should stick together rather than go solo. Zelensky says negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the United States will meet in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November; the Kremlin says after Nov. 10. He calls them technical-level meetings. Neither government calls them peace talks.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Benjamin Netanyahu lost the first exit polls and took the stage at 3:23 a.m. to say the right had a majority "among the Zionist public." By noon his party said the election was "stolen by Arab parties" and demanded a police and Shin Bet investigation. In between, the polls changed, not the voters.

The night's first exit polls put Likud at 24 seats and Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar at 22, Netanyahu's bloc at 50, Eisenkot's at 52 or 53, the Arab lists at 17 or 18. Eisenkot, the former army chief, took the stage after midnight and said, "We made history." He told Netanyahu, "do not dare use the security of Israel for your needs."

By 2:17 a.m. all three channels had revised. Channel 12 put Likud at 27 and Netanyahu's bloc at 52; Kan and Channel 13 called it 51 to 51. Nobody had voted since the polls closed.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

James Comey is charged for the third time. His daughter beat the department in court the same day.

Prosecutors filed a two-count criminal information against Comey in Washington on Oct. 5 and kept it sealed until Judge Trevor McFadden opened it Monday. They say Comey, as FBI director, had his staff give classified information to a New York Times reporter for an Oct. 5, 2016, story on how Yahoo helped the government read email. The filing landed ten years to the day after the article. An information is a prosecutor's own paper. No grand jury voted on it.

Two earlier prosecution teams looked at the same leak and charged no one, Comey's lawyer Patrick Fitzgerald said. Comey's lawyers moved to dismiss: they argue the ten-year clock for espionage cases runs only to an indictment, and the department never got one. The department answered that filing an information stops the clock and buys it time to seek one.

The first Comey indictment, for lying to Congress, died in November when a judge found Lindsey Halligan unlawfully appointed. The second, the seashells case, waits until next year.

Monday morning, Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan ruled the department fired Maurene Comey illegally.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Donald Trump Jr. spent two days in a hunting camp in western Mongolia in late August with Umar Kremlev, the Kremlin-connected president of the International Boxing Association, the Financial Times reported Monday night. One person on the trip said the two men tried not to be photographed together.

Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward Trump Jr.'s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas, through a Dubai company tied to his boxing body, ProPublica reported Sept. 14. His wife called it a gift from a friend. President Trump later said his son had repaid it. Democrats in Congress asked for an investigation.

Then the friend followed the groom to Mongolia.

The FT rebuilt the trip from guides, local officials, flight records, social media and public documents. Trump Jr. flew into Ulaanbaatar from his island wedding and went several hundred kilometers west to a camp of guides, drivers and cooks. Kremlev flew in from Kazakhstan with Arthur Martirosov, a partner at Voskhod, a Russian venture fund under U.S. sanctions.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Beatrice Keul has given House Judiciary Democratic staff a substantially more serious account of her encounter with Donald Trump in 1993: she says he raped her in a suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Her account also places Jeffrey Epstein at the event and names Paolo Zampolli as the man Trump allegedly promised would arrange her American visa.

The central new disclosure is explicit. Keul previously described resisting an attempted rape. In their October 26 report, committee staff say that, through extensive discussions over several weeks, she disclosed a completed rape and additional details she had previously withheld. This is a new allegation within an encounter she had already publicly described. House Judiciary Democrats’ report, pp. 16–19

The offers before the alleged assault

Keul, a Swiss model and financial-services professional, traveled to the United States for the Donald J. Trump American Dream Pageant in November 1993.

At a press luncheon at the Plaza, she says Trump approached her with the greeting, “Finally we meet Ms. Keul,” pronouncing her surname “cool.” During a conversation lasting at least 15 minutes, he offered to arrange a visa and personally ensure her admission to New York University.

When she said she could handle her own visa, she recalls him insisting: “No no, my friend Paolo will take care of that.”

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

The report identifies “Paolo” as Paolo Zampolli.

According to Keul, Epstein approached immediately after Trump stepped away. His introduction: “I’m Jeffrey, Don’s best friend.”

For at least ten minutes, she says, Epstein spoke with her while looking toward Trump, who remained across the room. Epstein offered a future trip to Mar-a-Lago, telling her: “We organize many parties with Don.” Flights and accommodations would be covered.

“The show must go on”

Later that day, Keul says, a Trump representative escorted her upstairs for a private meeting. She believed it could advance her career and education.

Inside the suite, she alleges, Trump grabbed her from behind and raped her, tearing her dress and leaving her bleeding and bruised.

Afterward, she says, he sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated the visa and university offers, and made her promise to remain silent.

“The show must go on,” she recalls him saying.

Keul told staff she completed the pageant in a terrified “daze.” Her passport had been taken on arrival, and she feared that requesting its early return would reveal something was wrong. The report does not identify who held it.

During the pageant, she says, she and four other models were also summoned to a private audition with Elite founder John Casablancas, who made similar promises to take care of her.

She returned to Switzerland and declined another Trump-sponsored pageant in Hawaii. Months later, she says, Trump called her there, again offering a visa and NYU admission. She declined.

Where Zampolli enters

The alleged reference to Zampolli gives the visa promise a specific person to investigate. He later sponsored Melania Knauss’s modeling work visa and worked for the Trump Organization. Separately, Zampolli and Epstein pursued an unsuccessful bid to acquire Elite’s New York business in 2004.

The committee report also cites FBI accounts from women whose paths to Epstein passed through Zampolli’s modeling agency. One former model described Epstein examining portfolios at its office before offering her work.

These connections establish subjects for further questioning. Keul’s account does not establish that Zampolli arranged her visa, witnessed the alleged assault or knew about it. Zampolli has acknowledged Epstein visited his agency while rejecting allegations of involvement or collaboration.

Keul supplied photographs documenting her presence at the pageant and contact with Trump. Earlier New York Times reporting also identified a friend who recalled her describing the Plaza episode around 2004. Neither independently establishes the alleged rape.

The White House denies the allegations. “None of these allegations are true,” spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Us Weekly.

The new account supplies concrete investigative leads: the representative who escorted Keul upstairs, the handling of her passport, the promised visa arrangements and the subsequent telephone call. Those details give investigators specific people, records and recollections to pursue.

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

The Narativ | Know Sooner

Tuesday, October 27, 2026

👀 THE FRONT PAGE

🗳️ ISRAEL VOTES

Polls opened at 7 a.m. in Israel for the first election since Oct. 7, 2023. Benjamin Netanyahu went in behind: Likud polled 19 to 21 seats in the final three polls, Gadi Eisenkot's new Yashar party 22 to 23, and Netanyahu's bloc sat at 50 of the 61 seats he needs. He is a prime minister on trial for bribery, under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, with 74,000 dead in Gaza and no inquiry into the attack that started the war. Hamas still exists. Hezbollah still exists. Iran did not go away. So he did what Donald Trump did in 2020. People close to Netanyahu have discussed a "stolen and fake election" story to run if the count goes against him, Haaretz reported Monday, and compared it to Trump's campaign against Joe Biden. Likud sent its own crews to stand outside polling stations in Arab towns and "supervise" voters.

Read the full story →

⚖️ DEMOCRATS SUE TO RESTRAIN BLANCHE

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked a federal judge on Monday to put Attorney General Todd Blanche's Justice Department under a court order for the last week before the midterms. The judge is James Boasberg. The party's Senate and House campaign committees, its governors association, the Nevada State Democratic Party and one California voter joined the motion. Trump called for impeaching the judge in March 2025, without naming him, after Boasberg tried to halt his deportation flights; Boasberg drew this case on Oct. 21.

Read the full story →

🏨 A NEW RAPE CLAIM AGAINST TRUMP

By Zev Shalev | The Narativ Beatrice Keul has given House Judiciary Democratic staff a substantially more serious account of her encounter with Donald Trump in 1993: she says he raped her in a suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Her account also places Jeffrey Epstein at the event and names Paolo Zampolli as the man Trump allegedly promised would arrange her American visa.

Read the full story →

🔨 EPSTEIN PROSECUTOR, MAUREEN COMEY, IS BTW

James Comey is charged for the third time. His daughter beat the department in court the same day. Prosecutors filed a two-count criminal information against Comey in Washington on Oct. 5 and kept it sealed until Judge Trevor McFadden opened it Monday. The filing landed ten years to the day after the article.

Read the full story →

🦌 MONGOLIA TRIP

Donald Trump Jr. spent two days in a hunting camp in western Mongolia in late August with Umar Kremlev, the Kremlin-connected president of the International Boxing Association, the Financial Times reported Monday night.

Read the full story →

🧭 THE BIGGER PICTURE

Keep three elections in sight at once: Brazil, Israel and America's midterms. Each one shows why they are intertwined. Netanyahu is running Trump's stolen-election greatest hits, blaming a bloc of voters the law allows to vote, Israel's Arab citizens, for taking part in the democracy. That is an astonishing thing for a leader to do, and it is exactly what Trump and Flávio Bolsonaro do. Three interlinked strongmen hold power they got by corrupt and possibly illegal means, and they push it across the whole political spectrum. Their power has limits. The limits show when people stand up, when democracy and its institutions stand up, when the courts play their independent role and fight full throttle against this administration. Every push gets a pushback: autocracy pushed hard, and democracy is pushing back just as hard. Wait for Israel's count before celebrating, and for the United States before taking heart.

📺 LIVE TODAY

NARATIV LIVE, 1:30 PM ET: Ellie Leonard on the House Judiciary report ·

FIVESTACK, 3 PM ET

📖 READ THIS

Narativ with Zev Shalev

The Plot To Steal 2026: The Jan 6 Insurrectionists Are Back - And Trying It Again

On November 3, 2020, Donald J. Trump lost the presidential election. Within three weeks, a group of his outside advisors — Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne, Phil Waldron, L. Lin Wood — had gathered at Tomotley Plantation in Beaufort County, South Carolina, a private estate bought by Wood for approximately $7.9 million. They spent late November and December drafting the legal framework they believed could keep Trump in office: a draft executive order, under the authority of E.O. 13848, directing the federal seizure of electronic voting machines. They brought the plan to the Oval Office on December 18, 2020. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone declined to advance it. The plan died. Or it appeared to…

Listen now

6 months ago · 556 likes · 14 comments · Zev Shalev, Denver Riggleman, and Scott MacFarlane

Share

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked a federal judge on Monday to put Attorney General Todd Blanche's Justice Department under a court order for the last week before the midterms. The judge is James Boasberg.

The party's Senate and House campaign committees, its governors association, the Nevada State Democratic Party and one California voter joined the motion. They want Boasberg to bar Blanche, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and their agencies from demanding that any state strike a registered voter, withhold a ballot, set one aside uncounted, or threaten an election official with prosecution for refusing, until the last state certifies. Trump called for impeaching the judge in March 2025, without naming him, after Boasberg tried to halt his deportation flights; Boasberg drew this case on Oct. 21. He has the parties on Zoom Thursday at 2 p.m. on the Democrats' motion for fast discovery and has set no date yet on the order itself. The government told the plaintiffs it opposes the order.

They handed him mostly the government's own letters.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Polls opened at 7 a.m. in Israel for the first election since Oct. 7, 2023. Benjamin Netanyahu went in behind: Likud polled 19 to 21 seats in the final three polls, Gadi Eisenkot's new Yashar party 22 to 23, and Netanyahu's bloc sat at 50 of the 61 seats he needs. He is a prime minister on trial for bribery, under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, with 74,000 dead in Gaza and no inquiry into the attack that started the war. Hamas still exists. Hezbollah still exists. Iran did not go away.

So he did what Donald Trump did in 2020.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more

Subscribe now

👀 THE FRONT PAGE

🕵️ ZAMPOLLI & TTUMP NAMED

Jamie Raskin released a 53-page report Monday morning 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 recently his envoy, a likely co-conspirator in the same ring. Then it names who is covering it up: Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former defense lawyer. It is a minority staff report. Raskin's Democrats wrote it alone and released it eight days before the vote. The FBI files inside it do not know that. A girl of 18 or 19 arrived from Poland or Slovenia with no money and no papers. Zampolli signed her, got her a visa and put her in a model apartment on Varick Street with 10 other women. Epstein came to the castings and went through the portfolios. Two women told the FBI that is how he found them.

Read the full story →

💣 STRIKE HELD

Donald Trump is leaning toward a major strike on Iran and wants the midterms out of the way first. Two US officials told CNN on Monday that the forces are in place, with a target list covering Iran's energy plants, military sites and nuclear facilities, ready to go "within 96 hours of receiving" his order. The White House declined to comment. The date is the story. Trump posted on Oct. 8 that "we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections."

Read the full story →

⚖️ PETERS' PLAN

Tina Peters told 60 Minutes she is "willing to do whatever needs to be done to save this country." She has done it once already. Bill Whitaker read her the charges on Sunday night. "You took an oath." "I did." "Why turn off the security cameras?" "It was not against the law." "You gave an outsider fake credentials. Did you break the law?"

Read the full story →

🗳️ LULA'S LINE

Lula told Trump to stay out of Brazil's election. Then he won it. In July 2025 Trump put 50% tariffs on Brazil, partly over Jair Bolsonaro's coup trial, and Marco Rubio restricted the visa of the judge running it. Days later the State Department named two Brazilian gangs terrorist organizations, and Flávio claimed the credit.

Read the full story →

🤖 ANTHROPIC FILES

Dario Amodei filed on Monday to take Anthropic public on Nasdaq. Buyers will trade it as ANT. Amodei is showing them a net loss of $80.7 billion for the first six months of 2026.

Read the full story →

🧭 THE BIGGER PICTURE

Three ballots, one week. Brazil voted Sunday defeated teh strongman; Serbia's leaderless students did the same. Next Israel must choose between their dictator or a cabinet which represents its population. America votes in eight days with the president's Justice Department already preemptively suing against the result while an election official keeps talking about seizing ballots. Two lawyers are writing drafting pardons for White House staff. Democracy is one for three, Serbia the honorable mention. Tomorrow Israel. The last ballot is ours. We’re watching.

📺 LIVE TODAY

Fivestack — 3 PM ET, Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev.

📖 READ THIS

Share

Donald Trump is leaning toward a major strike on Iran and wants the midterms out of the way first. Two US officials told CNN on Monday that the forces are in place, with a target list covering Iran's energy plants, military sites and nuclear facilities, ready to go "within 96 hours of receiving" his order. The White House declined to comment.

The date is the story. Trump posted on Oct. 8 that "we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections." His generals have the target list ready 18 days later.

Trump spoke in Perry, Georgia, on Saturday with gas at $4.29 a gallon, against $3.06 a year ago, and 73% of likely voters told the New York Times/Siena poll they disapprove of how he handles it. Trump told the crowd his staff had begged him off the subject: "My people say, please don't mention that, Sir, people are paying a little higher." Then he said it anyway. "I don't give a damn, I'm gonna say it: We're making a frickin fortune." He said the country is "making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what's happened in the Middle East."

Benjamin Netanyahu wanted the strike before his own vote, not after. An Israeli security source told CNN that Netanyahu "really wanted and tried to convince Trump for a joint attack in Iran before the elections," and that Trump held off partly because Israel's army chief, Eyal Zamir, warned Gen. Dan Caine a strike could harm Israel's election and force its postponement. Netanyahu's office called that "fake news." Channel 12 reported Zamir and Netanyahu clashed this weekend over a political directive on Iran, and Defense Minister Israel Katz called the report "completely baseless and false." The joint plans sit ready, "waiting for Trump's approval," the source said.

So the strike waits on two ballots, and the oil price waits on the strike. "We're making a frickin fortune" — who is the "we"? Because Americans are not.

Subscribe now

Share

Take me back to The Narativ front page

Read more