THE WEEKLY: Paolo Zampolli’s Firing, The Sorry State of CNN, and The Letter Our Attorney Sent Melania’s Lawyer

Narativ's best reads and views for the week ending Sunday, October 18. Thirty-five pieces. Six that mattered. Put the coffee on.

Nobody has time to read every Substack, and this week we published thirty-five pieces. So here is the week in one sitting: six stories, the links, twenty minutes. Pull up the chair.

OUR INVESTIGATION BEGAN IN JUNE. HE WAS FIRED ON THURSDAY.

The State Department fired Paolo Zampolli on Thursday afternoon, a year after his own boss put in writing that his Balkan business was "possibly unlawful." Narativ got there four months before the department did. On June 16 we published "Melania's Shadow: Who Is Paolo Zampolli?" and said what we had found: a likely Russian spy cell, run for years inside the United Nations. On July 11, "The Spy at the First Lady's Side" laid out his thirty years around Russian officials, his ambassador rank with no Senate confirmation and no security clearance, and asked the one question nobody in government has answered: who vetted this man? Two days later we wrote that the press still would not print his name. Amanda Ungaro, who kept his emails, brought them to Narativ Live and then to Congress. Jacob Kaarsbo, a career Danish intelligence officer, assessed the investigation on air; his verdict is the title: coincidence takes a lot of planning. In September we published the email trove itself: passports, UN votes and Trump condos, traded from a desk inside the American mission to the UN.

On Thursday Politico printed the deputy secretary of state's emails, and State fired him the same afternoon. He left quoting the president:

"Why do you want to work in government when you can close all these deals?"

The same day, Russia’s state news agency TASS published a set of interviews with him proposing a US-Russia hockey legends match and Russia’s return to the Olympics under its own flag. The same Serb government that handed him its projects pays the lobbying firm where Susie Wiles’s daughter is a partner $35,000 a month, and paid Trump’s campaign chiefs hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Friday on Narativ Live, we identified at least five White House insiders with a close link to the same Kremlin proxy, Republic. Nothing new here. Six days after Russia seized Crimea, Zampolli wrote to Russia’s UN ambassador. One word: “FANTASTIC.” He’ll likely still work for those same interests. At least he won’t be officially representing the US State Department.

MORE ON THIS STORY

https://www.narativ.org/p/0710-first-lady-spy

https://www.narativ.org/p/the-tiger-was-never-the-point

https://www.narativ.org/p/coincidence-takes-a-lot-of-planning

https://www.narativ.org/p/0913-zampolli-passports

https://www.narativ.org/p/1016-zampolli

THE LETTER

In July, Melania Trump's personal lawyer sent Narativ a letter demanding we retract the Zampolli reporting, apologize and pay damages, and threatening to sue if we did not. Zev read it aloud, in full, on FiveStack on July 27 and declined every demand on air. The letter came from Alejandro Brito's firm in Coral Gables, Florida. Amanda Ungaro got the same kind of threats in Brazil over the same reporting. We retained the trial lawyer John B. Williams, opened a legal defense fund, and kept publishing. On July 29 Williams answered Brito. His letter is a masterpiece of its kind, and we reprint it in full:

Dear Mr. Brito:

I represent Zev Shalev, and write in response to your letter of July 21, 2026, on behalf of your client Melania Trump. I do not represent Ms. Ungaro.

As to Mr. Shalev, you make a variety of allegations regarding supposed malice, recklessness, purposeful avoidance, ill will, lack of diligence, bias, and "overwhelming financial and reputational harm," all of which are incorrect, and all of which will be vigorously disputed should you choose to pursue your "legal rights and remedies."

Regardless, your retraction demand is defective under the Florida retraction statute. This statute requires the claimant to specify the statements in the article or broadcast which are alleged to be false and defamatory, and cases decided under this statute require the claimant to so "with particularity."

For example, the first supposedly false and defamatory statement is: "The First Lady Spy Scandal," without reference to the precise words used, the defamatory meaning allegedly conveyed, whether the meaning is express or implied, and if implied, the facts or context necessary to create that implication. You do not identify what specifically is false, nor do you provide any hint as to what the true facts may be.

Your other two supposed defamations do set forth precise words but provide no information as to the defamatory meaning that you are apparently alleging. Nor do you explain whether this meaning is express or implied, and if it is implied, what facts or context is necessary to create that supposedly false implication. And finally, if those statements are supposedly false, on what basis do you allege they are false? It is your burden to plead and prove falsity, and you provide no basis upon which we can suitably assess the accuracy of those statements.

Finally, you allege that these statements "wrongly imply that Mrs. Trump is committing myriad wrongful, illegal acts." Again, please advise what are the wrongful implications created by these statements. In addition, please tell us what "myriad wrongful acts" and "myriad illegal acts" are implied by these statements.

Mr. Shalev takes his responsibilities as a journalist seriously. He will respond to your allegations in a full and fulsome fashion but cannot do so in the absence of an appropriate understanding of these allegations.

On behalf of Mr. Shalev, I confirm that he will preserve all records related to the defamatory statements. Your letter also demands that he preserve all records related to "any and all other false malicious and defamatory statements about Mrs. Trump." Again, we do not know what you are referring to and of course disagree that any such statements exist. But if you will specifically identify the article or broadcast, he will preserve those records as well.

Very truly yours,

John B. Williams

Brito has filed no suit. Three months later the man the reporting was about is out of the State Department. The reporting is still up.

This is the shift in the news business, in one story. Independent journalists, still free to investigate and report what they find, are the ones delivering results. Count the networks. Of the six major American television networks, one, CNN, put the firing on its website, and called it an office feud. The other five carried nothing. None of them put Russia, the Balkans or the Srpska payroll in the story. None of them said who reported it first. Other independent journalists worked this story too, and readers paid for the lawyer. Those of us still allowed to do this work are largely ignored by the mainstream press, and we keep getting results anyway. Subscribe, stay subscribed, and we extend this work and grow it with your help.

THE STARLINK ORDER CAME FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

Elon Musk's company capped Ukraine's military Starlink terminals at 100 miles an hour on Tuesday night and told nobody; Ukraine's army found out from customer support. The same night Putin fired 39 missiles at Kyiv, hit all three of its power plants and put 600,000 people in the dark, with no American warning for the first wave. By Thursday two U.S. officials had told Reuters the order came from inside the White House. Trump went on Newsmax that night and called Zelensky "more difficult to deal with than Putin." Friday morning Putin's spokesman repeated the line as his own. Nine senators, four of them Republicans, want the Pentagon's inspector general to name who gave the order by November 1. Every hour the throttle stands is dead bodies in Kyiv.

BLOOD DIESEL: A LICENSE, NO CONTRACT

On October 9 Trump told the country Russian diesel was coming "immediately." Russia's deputy prime minister said Wednesday there was still no contract, and the first tanker to load sailed for Morocco. What exists is a license. The day Trump announced the deal, Treasury signed General License 135, which lets anyone ship Russian diesel into the United States until April 7, 2027. The license was signed first. Vladimir Solovyov told Russian state television what the deal is for: "quite a bit of money will flow into our state coffers." Putin got six months of sanctions relief before a barrel moved. By Trump's own figures, 1.8 million tons of Russian diesel are coming, more than a billion dollars at today's prices, and we get nothing in return. We are funding Putin's war, and Ukraine pays for it in dead.

THREE INSIDERS OUT IN FIVE DAYS

Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as ambassador to Greece on Tuesday after her texts asking a donor to wire $100,000 to her American Express account surfaced. The donor, Kentucky lawyer Eric Deters, kept the receipts, and says he also paid Donald Trump Jr. $200,000 and Eric Trump $100,000. By Thursday he was suing Guilfoyle for defamation in Kentucky and saying he wants Don Jr. under oath. Zampolli went Thursday. Katie Zacharia, the press secretary Trump announced as "an attorney," went Friday, five days into the job, after sΩΩhe twice answered a question about where she passed the bar with "When I moved to China." She failed the California bar in 2011 and never retook it. Narativ raised her credentials on Monday, hours before her only briefing. The West Wing is shedding the people whose stories were catching up with them, three weeks before a vote it expects to lose.

EPSTEIN'S COMPANY FIRED FIRST IN 2008

On Monday, July 30, 2007, a fax from Liquid Funding Limited of Hamilton, Bermuda, landed at American Home Mortgage, the tenth-largest lender in the country: $13.6 million in cash by five o'clock. Jeffrey Epstein built Liquid Funding with Bear Stearns in 2000, chaired it until four months before that fax, and kept his stake. Court records show it made eight cash demands in twenty days, struck first, and was the only lender paid in full before American Home died with 197,000 families' mortgages on its books. When Bear itself collapsed in March 2008, every Liquid Funding note was paid at 100 cents on the dollar. The same week Roman Abramovich turned up in Epstein's own emails ("roman already saw the house and i have turned down 250 m"), and Elizabeth Warren filed a bill to make the Federal Reserve open its Epstein files on the banks. The Fed lent $29 billion in 2008 so JPMorgan could buy Bear. Go down that road and Congress finds the Greatest Heist.

TRUMP'S CLASSMATE SAID MARTIAL LAW OUT LOUD

Peter Ticktin went to military school with Donald Trump and is Tina Peters's lawyer. On a September 30 call for MAGA poll workers he said "there would have to be martial law in the event" of "another rigged election," with "commandeering of ballots and election equipment." He and Peters visited Trump at the White House in June. The morning Axios printed the tape, the Washington Post reported that Trump's own aides expect to lose the House. Elon Musk gave Republican super PACs $178 million in three months, and a Russia-linked network has pushed fake CNN clips at American voters since September. The White House said the election will be "safe, secure, and transparent," and a White House official told The Atlantic that Ticktin and Peters have no role in its election policy. It has not said no.

The Grift Count for the week stands at eleven: Srpska's money, SpaceX debt, Guilfoyle'scard, Lukoil, the ballroom, Tether, Musk's $178 million, a senator's ranch, the Kennedy Center, Trump's drugmaker stocks, Musk's lottery. Fox asked voters what worries them most. Eighty-eight percent said corruption in government, more than said inflation. The vote is sixteen days away.

That's The Weekly. Back Monday with the board.

PS — Chapter 11 of The Greatest Heist, Concord and its one client, is in research.