5️⃣ Trump’s FBI

Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Los Angeles office, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump watched a TikTok of protesters warning neighbors about immigration agents in Alhambra, and that Kash Patel told FBI leaders the president “was angry about the incident, and he wanted those protesters investigated and arrested.” A second order, she says, came from Emil Bove: investigate anyone protesting at federal buildings in Los Angeles, with no federal crime identified. Everyone assumed it. Now a witness has said it on the record, and Sen. Alex Padilla has asked Patel and Todd Blanche how many of those investigations are open.

4️⃣ The wedding receipt

Umar Kremlev, the Russian boxing boss Putin just decorated with the Order of Friendship, told a press conference in Istanbul that Donald Trump Jr. had paid him back for the Bahamas wedding: “He did repay the money I spent on the present.” Then: “Frankly speaking, I do not understand why he decided to do so.” Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward the May celebration, by AP’s account. Nobody denies it happened. The defense is that it was nothing.

3️⃣ A small price to pay

Trump told a Nebraska crowd that Iran taking out Los Angeles and San Diego would be “a very small price to pay.” The tape shows what he was defending: a minute after asking the crowd to vote by Nov. 3, he called the war’s gas prices “a little bit high” and “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe,” named the two cities, and closed on “your gas and your gasoline.” The White House says he meant a nuclear Iran; nuclear is seven minutes earlier on the tape.

2️⃣ The DOJ named the whistleblower

When the Justice Department published Simon Andriesz’s 2021 FBI interview in the Epstein files, it blacked out every reference to him but one. On page two his name stands, misspelled, in plain sight. Britain’s regulator later told him that because his identity had been disclosed he had lost his whistleblower protection, advice it now calls wrong. He died in Thailand on Sept. 23. The man he accused is the Commerce Secretary, who told the Senate about his family’s lunch on Epstein’s island: “I don’t recall why we did it. But we did it.”

1️⃣ The plague Russia won’t name

Russian media report a second death in the Irkutsk outbreak, a week after a 28-year-old laboratory assistant at the Anti-Plague Research Institute died; reports say she broke a test tube holding live plague bacteria. Russia’s health agency calls it pneumonia of unknown cause and says it found no plague among 197 contacts. REN TV deleted six of its own posts on the outbreak, one of which said a second test had confirmed plague; Narativ saved the captures. The second death is a claim until Moscow or Washington confirms it.

Bonus

Dean Blundell, drawing on the Washington Sun, walked through the Trump family’s crypto: on May 19, four anonymous wallets moved more than 20 billion World Liberty Financial tokens into a vesting contract. Dean’s read: a getaway van, packed before Nov. 3. He also reported that the OSCE, which has observed every U.S. federal election since 2002, has been uninvited from this one. A plague and a war are the two things that keep people home on election day.

Thank you Ellie Leonard, Dani Smart, LC – Silence is Complicity, Noble Blend, Skutt Hope, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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