Clinton Testifies, DOJ Database Goes Dark, Lutnick Photo Surfaces, and the Ellison Media Takeover

Hillary Clinton testified behind closed doors today in Chappaqua before the House Oversight Committee, and within minutes the circus began. Rep. Lauren Boebert passed a photo from inside the closed-door deposition to conservative influencer Benny Johnson, pausing the hearing. Clinton demanded the session be public. Comer refused. Clinton’s opening statement was direct: she never met Epstein, never flew on his plane, never visited his island. Ellie Leonard noted the absurdity of the Pizzagate-era framing still driving the committee’s agenda while the man with thousands of mentions in the Epstein files sits untouched in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, a photo surfaced from the Epstein files showing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick with his two sons on Little St. James Island, an image that has since been scrubbed from the internet.The DOJ’s Epstein files search database went completely offline during the show. Ellie confirmed she could access previous searches through the back end but could not initiate new ones through the front page. The timing raised immediate suspicion, coming the same day NPR confirmed 50-plus pages were withheld from the release, including four FBI 302s from a woman who accused Trump and Epstein of sexually abusing her when she was between 13 and 15. Lev Parnas called the missing 302s the most important documents being hidden, noting that the FBI conducted four separate interviews with the accuser, provided her legal representation, and followed up repeatedly, all markers of a credible case. “The number one protector of pedophilia of Jeffrey Epstein is Donald Trump and his administration,” Lev said.Zev presented new Narativ reporting on the Rothschild-Epstein-Trump financial network. Emails from the Epstein files show Jeffrey Epstein claiming descent from the Ritter von Epstein banking dynasty of 1870s Vienna, a claim taken seriously by associates including Harvard professor Martin Nowak, who photographed ancestral tombstones in Europe and sent them to Epstein, and Ariane de Rothschild herself. Zev connected this to Wilbur Ross, who ran Rothschild’s bankruptcy practice and bailed out Trump’s casinos in the 1990s, and to the Commerce Department seat passing from Ross to Lutnick. Ellie added that Linda Rothschild, not Ghislaine Maxwell, was the person who introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew.Lev Parnas confirmed that a Washington Post report validated what his sources had been telling him for months: the White House is circulating a 17-page draft executive order to declare a national emergency over elections, claiming China interfered in 2020. The order would ban mail-in ballots, mandate voter ID, and give the president power over how votes are cast and counted nationwide. Lev said his source inside the administration had been urging him for weeks to keep mentioning Tulsi Gabbard and China, warning it was coming. Wajahat Ali connected it to a broader pattern of voter suppression including the SAVE Act, gerrymandering, ICE at polling places, and Gabbard’s involvement in the Fulton County FBI raid. Trump is down 10 points underwater in Texas and 22 to 26 with independents. “It’s not who votes for you, Donald,” Lev said, quoting what Putin told Trump. “It’s who counts the votes.”The panel discussed Netflix pulling out of the Warner Brothers acquisition, clearing the way for Larry and David Ellison’s Paramount-Skydance to merge with Warner Brothers. Wajahat Ali laid out what that means: the Ellisons, hardcore pro-Trump and pro-Netanyahu, would control TikTok, Paramount, Warner Brothers, CBS, TNT, TBS, Discovery, HBO, and CNN. David Ellison sat with Lindsey Graham at the State of the Union. Paramount has already blacklisted talent who spoke against the genocide. John Oliver’s contract expires next year. Ali called it a deliberate territorial expansion where the return on investment is not profit but control. Zev warned that consolidating newsrooms means fewer reporters covering each story and a drift toward state-run media. Lev cautioned that even Substack could one day be bought out and urged the independent media community to grow so large that abandoning them becomes too costly.Narativ Live is available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Narativ Live is a production of narativ.org.Thank you Cheech Previti, Mary Kay Elloian, MBA, JD, Esq, Elaine Cimino, Iulia Huiu, Nancy McAllister, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lev Parnas and Ellie Leonard! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe