By LouOne More Question

Here's the order, before anybody tells me what it means. I'm not saying anything yet, I'm just putting the dates down.

October 7, 2023: the Hamas-led attack. October 7, 2026: Netanyahu faces renewed questions over whether he had advance warning. October 16: settlers beat a Washington Post photographer while attacking Palestinian olive farmers. October 17: Netanyahu praises Trump's "wicked sense of humor," defends the alliance. October 23: the West Bank goes under what critics call a full lockdown, condemned as collective punishment. October 26: a UN-mandated commission calls the occupation's conduct crimes against humanity, the same week Israel bars a group of European lawmakers who'd come to watch the olive harvest, the same week three thousand more people are displaced out of Hebron. October 27: the polls open for Israel's first election since October 7.

That's the order. I laid it out, I didn't say anything.

Now here's the one I can't put down, and I apologize in advance, because I'm going to come back to it more than once before I'm through with it.

The New York Times reported this week that Israel's military chief resisted the prime minister on a strike against Iran; the prime minister then pressed, in recent days, for a separate action short of an overt strike — that's according to an official and a person briefed on the matter, not the general himself. I want that sourcing attached every time, because it matters who's saying it and who isn't.

First time through, and I'm sorry, it's the date that gets me. "In recent days" puts the pressing somewhere in that same stretch of calendar as the lockdown, the barred lawmakers, the UN report — the same stretch where the ballots were already printed. Somebody was pressing for something short of a strike in the very week the country was being told to go vote.

I'm sorry, I keep going back to this, but the second time it's the sourcing that bothers me. Not the general. An official. A person briefed on the matter. Two people, neither one wearing the uniform — which means the resisting and the pressing both come from the same two unnamed sources, and I don't know how to weigh one against the other.

Third time, and I promise I'm getting somewhere. I was out in the garage this weekend — the fan belt's going again — and the replacement part I had was a half-inch short of what the car needed. Not wrong. Short. My guy at the shop can refuse to put in a part that's a half-inch short — that's resisting — or he can rig the thing to turn over anyway, which isn't the repair, it's a separate action, short of the repair, and from the driveway you cannot tell which one he did. I carried that belt back and forth across the garage twice before I worked out which.

Fourth time, I'm sorry, it's the word "overt" now. Overt just means out in the open. Short of overt means not out in the open. I keep asking what a person presses for, days before his own election, that isn't supposed to be out in the open.

Here's the sentence one more time, and this is the last time, I promise, exactly the way it was written: Israel's military chief resisted the prime minister, who then pressed in recent days for a separate action, short of an overt strike, according to an official and a person briefed on the matter. I wanted it whole.

Okay. I'll let you go.

Oh — excuse me, one more thing before you go. This pressing, the "recent days" part — was that before this morning's polls opened, or after?

The paper says ahead of the election. So: before.

Short of an overt strike. Before the vote. That's the order I started with, and I still haven't said what it means.

By MitchInvestigations

I read dockets for a living, which obligates me to note that the Department of Justice has now lost the same argument four times since September, and has filed it a fifth.

Start with the record, because the record is the whole story. The accusation came first and empty-handed: a senator called California's mail ballots a harvesting operation and could not point to a single prosecuted case. The Justice Department supplied one on October 19th — 28 green card holders charged with registering and voting, 48 voting-crime counts in all, the docket the accusation had been missing. That was last week's column.

This week the department tried to extend the same theory to the ballots themselves. On October 23rd it asked the Ninth Circuit to order California to segregate 20,000 mail ballots within 48 hours, on the theory that the people who cast them might not be citizens. On October 26th a three-judge panel answered, 2 to 1: no. Not on the merits — the majority found it lacked jurisdiction to grant the emergency order at all. California had already refused the 48-hour deadline; the court agreed it didn't have to comply with an order the court itself wasn't empowered to issue.

All together now — count the losses. September 10th, the First Circuit called the administration's mail-in voting order "likely unlawful." September 14th, the Supreme Court declined to enforce it before the midterms anyway. September 24th, the California Supreme Court ordered a sheriff who'd seized 650,000 ballots to give them back, calling the seizure unlawful under a statute that says ballots do not leave election officials' custody, ever. October 26th, the Ninth Circuit, 2-1. Four courts, four no's, one filing office.

The fifth filing came the same week as the fourth no. On October 27th, less than two weeks after the California demand, the department asked Washington state to set aside more than 400 ballots on the identical theory: suspected noncitizens, named by the government, unverified by any court. Washington has competitive House and Senate races. So did California's targeted counties. The document does not explain the coincidence. The document never explains anything; it just asks, again, for a bigger list, in a new state, before the count that decides who holds the chamber.

Four denials have not produced a different filing. They have produced the same filing with a new venue line. All together now — that's the whole case, clause by clause, state by state, and it still hasn't named one proven vote.

By LouOne More Question

Let me put the dates down first, flat, because I keep losing the order and my handwriting is no help.

October 2016: a story runs in the New York Times. May 2019: the Justice Department charges Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, seventeen counts, including conspiring to obtain, receive and disclose national defense information. September 25 this year: a judge delays the first Comey case, the one about seashells, to early 2027, motions still pending, one of them asking her to throw it out as driven by the president's animus. October 5: a new case against the same man starts moving under seal. October 24: federal authorities arrest a contractor, 42, for allegedly passing national defense information to his girlfriend. October 26: a judge rules the administration illegally fired Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor, who believes she lost the job because of who her father is. The same day, the documents unseal. Two counts. Disclosing information related to the national defense. 2016.

That's the order. I'm not drawing anything from it. I just like the dates in a row where I can see them.

Now, the notebook. His lawyers — hold on, I had this — here. They say the case centers on an issue "that had already been investigated and had not led to charges." That's the Times, quoting them, about a leak to the Times. Investigated, no charges. NPR has them adding it's outside the time limit. A decade-old leak, is the phrase.

I'm sorry, I keep coming back to 2016, but it's the year the whole thing hangs on. Ten years. This one has had ten years and two previous tries at it.

One more thing about that year and then I'll move along. The Guardian says the filing "provides few details" about what was actually leaked, and that he conspired with a person the government doesn't name. So what's in hand is a year, two counts, and an unnamed person.

Here's where I get stuck, and it isn't clever, it's a box.

I keep a box of papers in my garage. Summer before last I sat out there on an upturned bucket and went through every sheet in it, and when I finished I wrote on the lid with a marker: checked, nothing here. My dog sleeps on that lid now. Twice since, I've moved the dog, carried the box across the yard and into the house, and gone through it again — once when the car needed a fan belt and I was sure the receipt was in there, once because I'd forgotten I ever wrote on the lid.

That's me, with a bucket and a marker, and it costs me an afternoon. Forgive me for circling, but what I can't put down is that somebody in that building walked to a drawer, pulled the 2016 file, carried it across a room, set it on a desk, and read the part where it says the matter had not led to charges. And then the counts got typed. Somebody carried that file across a room.

Excuse me — before you go, there's one page left and then I'm out of your way.

The same Monday those counts unsealed, the judge ruled the firing of his daughter illegal. She worked the sex crimes case against the president's dead former friend. The wire gives one reason for her losing the job, and the reason is her father. Two counts, one defendant, one person the filing won't name: I count her name in that zero times.

So here's the last one, and the answer is on the page. Of the two counts the department filed Monday, how many name the prosecutor a judge said that same Monday was fired illegally — and what's the one year the filing does name? I'm sorry. I keep coming back to 2016.

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk

Thirteen point one million dollars, and not one dollar of it spent under the name of the people who spent it. You will want to know which law that breaks. None. The Lever's reporters, Katya Schwenk and Luke Goldstein, traced the sum this week: routed, through intermediary groups. Routed, mind you. Not hidden, not laundered — routed, which is what one does with a parcel one means to arrive.

Five days before, a documentary put the other question — whether any of this warrants scrutiny under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Dion Nissenbaum, in that film, states the statute's test: "It says that you have to register under this law if you are acting at the request of a foreign government." A handsome test. Nobody has been required to sit it.

And in August the lobby lost yet another House race it had poured millions into, against a candidate who had barely mentioned Israel. Other millions, those. The seat went elsewhere ... and the name went nowhere at all. That is what the arrangement delivers without fail, and it is not a seat. You will vote without being told whose money asked you to.

By The LodgersThe Euro Desk

Today we are making a foreign election, American-style, which means it is cooked at home and eaten somewhere else. On Sunday Brazil re-elected Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the runoff, 51.7 percent against Flavio Bolsonaro's 48.2, a margin of four million votes, with the results published overnight on Monday. On Monday the American president called the election likely rigged. Bolsonaro is demanding the victory be annulled.

You will need an American social network's algorithm, a consulate with its shutters suddenly down, and a push from Washington to put money into a campaign against Brazil's supreme court.

Clive Shutters down. Mine have been down a fortnight and nobody at this table has knocked to ask what is being written behind them.

Gary Nothing is behind them. The shutter came off in spring and it is under the bike. I could have that door off in four minutes.

Begin at the end of September, when Brazil's own spy agency confirmed the existence of interference from the United States as well as Russia, the first round four days off. On 1 October the Guardian revealed the funding plan, and Brazil's attorney general, Jorge Messias, wrote that meddling "cannot be tolerated" and called the report "an important alert for Brazilian sovereignty". Two days later Lula's campaign asked for the sudden shutdown of American consular services to be looked into as interference in Brazilian elections.

Rob Sovereignty. This kitchen had sovereignty before the rota, and I am the only one who ever kept to it, which no one has once mentioned.

Keith You mention it weekly. There is an angle in this, though: somebody out there wants flags printed, and I know a man who prints by Thursday.

Now fold in the algorithm. On 23 October research showed Meta's was actively boosting Bolsonaro, and Pramila Jayapal and Bernie Sanders put questions to Mark Zuckerberg about it. Then Sunday came and the whole thing went on the floor in front of the kitchen. Gary, hold this.

Gary I am holding it. I have held everything in this house since the boiler, and the one who writes in the dark has held a pen.

Le Monde, which is what they read across the Channel, has it as "Trump slams 'rigged' Brazil election after ally loses", and says he had clearly been hoping for a victory for Flavio. At home the Washington Examiner has Lula clinching "victory out of thin air", with the United States declining to comment.

Pick the rigging up by both ends and look underneath: it is the same evidence being offered for the midterms at home, the midterms being the election we hold halfway through a president's term, for the Congress and not for him. You will be looking for the observers who settle such a thing. They are not going to Brazil. On 7 October the NAACP sued over the plan to send "a historic number" of election monitors to polling stations at home, saying it "stands to jeopardize" the elections.

Serves Brazil, which keeps its count and, by France 24's account, an uphill battle to govern. The bill goes to voters at home, where the monitors are being sent next month and the suit over them is still in court.

Rob Monitors. We had a monitor put on the meter and all it did was watch this house get colder, so I would not count on being watched.