Trump Vows Iran a Beating, Fauci Takes the Fifth, and Blanche Still Won't Answer for the Memo
The Narativ | Know Sooner — ⚔️ Saudis In · 🚪 Lawyer Ejected · ⚖️ Two Clocks · 🌏 18 Dead · 🛡️ Lawyering Up
👀 STORIES TO WATCH
⚔️ TRUMP VOWS A BEATING AS SAUDI JETS JOIN THE WAR
Trump vowed Wednesday to hit Iran back for its overnight salvo, telling Fox & Friends: "We'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating." Saudi jets flew the kingdom's first combat missions of the war, joining US strikes on Iran-backed militias across seven Iraqi provinces. Iran fired five ballistic missiles at the US airbase in Jordan; Jordanian and American crews downed all five, no casualties. Trump told Fox that Baghdad coordinated the Iraq strikes; Baghdad condemned them by mid-morning as a sovereignty violation and canceled Thursday's meeting with Mohammed bin Salman. Netanyahu sat with Trump Tuesday, his eighth visit, pressing to go in hard — Iran's salvo flew while the two men met, and the vow came the next morning; the sequence is Narativ's read. Nothing else moved: Iran rejected Oman's plan to split the Strait of Hormuz, crude jumped almost 7 percent, and AP reports the Pentagon's interceptor shelves are emptying. The coalition gained a kingdom overnight. It has not gained an exit.
🚪 RAND PAUL HAD FAUCI'S LAWYER REMOVED FROM THE ROOM
Rand Paul called security Wednesday and had Anthony Fauci's attorney escorted out of a Senate hearing room, minutes after Fauci invoked the Fifth on his advice. The question that drew it was not about Wuhan: did Fauci fund gain-of-function research in labs worldwide. Paul denied the privilege from the chair, argued Biden's pardon killed it, and warned of repercussions. A chairman is not a court — contempt runs through the committee, the floor, then a Justice Department that wants the case. Fauci answered the origins question six years ago, in his diaries.
⚖️ BLANCHE'S TWO CLOCKS, SIX HOURS APART
Todd Blanche faces two clocks Thursday. Senate Judiciary votes on him at nine, TPM reports; at three, Judge Emmet Sullivan requires the acting Attorney General to surrender the unredacted Epstein emails he has withheld for a month. Blanche has not said whether the DOJ memo typed the morning he met Ghislaine Maxwell briefed him for that room. Jay Clayton took over the DNI Tuesday night, an office cut in half.
🌏 EIGHTEEN DEAD IN KUMAMOTO, FOUR IN THE MALL THAT REOPENED IN JUNE
Kumamoto's dead reached 18 by Wednesday, and four of them died inside a mall Aeon reopened six weeks ago — rebuilt after the 2016 quake, marketed on its reinforced ceilings. Staff walked 3,000 customers out and a manager called the building clear; half an hour later an explosion brought the second floor down on the employees inside.
🛡️ WE NEED YOU
Melania Trump's attorney demanded Narativ retract its Zampolli reporting. Narativ is launching a legal defense fund instead. Zev Shalev, on air: "I don't even know how to retract it, because it's just accurate reporting."
🎯 THE BIGGER PICTURE
Lawfare is how public service gets done now, and the chill runs across the whole system. Rand Paul muzzled Anthony Fauci with a subpoena and a threat of prosecution. Todd Blanche is hurling everything he has at Katie Phang, the lawyer who asked a court to make him obey a law he had already conceded he was breaking. Melania Trump's attorney sent this newsroom a demand over reporting Narativ cannot retract because it is accurate, and answering it costs money the newsroom now has to raise. When basic government requires a judge's ruling, that is the clearest sign of a decline to autocracy we have seen. This is not business as usual. It is the difference between open government and autocracy, and the judiciary is holding the line.
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📚 READ THIS ON NARATIV
The memo Blanche won't answer for has a second name typed on it:
https://www.narativ.org/p/barr-epstein-files
EPSTEIN EXCLUSIVE: BILL BARR WAS IN THE ROOM WHEN IT HAPPENED
Two days after Jeffrey Epstein died, William Barr stood before the Fraternal Order of Police in New Orleans and made an unusual statement about an ongoing investigation. “I was appalled — indeed, the entire Department was — and frankly angry, to learn of the MCC’s failure to adequately secure this prisoner,” the Attorney General said. “We will get to the bottom of what happened at the MCC, and we will hold people accountable for this failure.”
Zev, I am a paid subscriber here on Substack but I can’t access the rest of the story about Dr. Fauci. I just checked my subscription and it is active.