As the Ukraine scandal at the heart of President Donald Trump’s impeachment has unfolded, one of the more surprising figures to emerge has been Lev Parnas. The Soviet-born henchman to Rudy Giuliani, who was indicted alongside business partner Igor Fruman for campaign finance violations back in October, flipped on Trump and announced he would cooperate with House investigators in November, seemingly because the president pretended not to know him. And on Wednesday, Parnas finally gotten the opportunity to speak out about what he knows. One day after House investigators released its first (incredibly incriminating) batch of documents that Parnas turned over regarding Ukraine, the onetime Trump ally made his cable news debut Wednesday to share his side of the Ukraine story—and implicate Trump in the process.
Parnas spoke with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC Wednesday, where he insisted that his actions regarding the Ukraine scandal were undertaken with Trump and Giuliani’s blessings. “President Trump knew exactly what was going on. He was aware of all my movements,” Parnas said when asked about the biggest inaccuracy that’s being told regarding Ukraine. “I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani, or the president.” Parnas said that he would speak with Ukrainian officials as a spokesman for Trump, putting officials on the phone with Giuliani, who would confirm that Parnas was appearing in an official capacity and speaking on behalf of the president of the United States. “I have no intent, I have no reason to speak to these officials, and they have no reason to speak to me,” Parnas said. These top Ukrainian officials, Parnas said, “were told to meet with me, and that’s the secret [the Trump administration was] trying to keep. I was on the ground doing their work.” (Giuliani told MSNBC that he had “never” vouched for Parnas to Ukrainian officials, and referred to Parnas as a “sad situation.”)
The Giuliani crony also dismantled another key Republican talking point defending Trump in Ukraine, in which Trump allies claim that the president wanted Ukraine to open investigations in order to investigate “corruption” in Ukraine, rather than his own political rivals. Parnas told Maddow that, as Democrats have argued, the president’s primary intention was to damage rival Joe Biden, whose son Hunter served on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma. “It was never about corruption, it was strictly about Burisma, which included Hunter Biden and Joe Biden,” Parnas told Maddow. Parnas also confirmed the existence of a quid pro quo, telling Maddow that he had been directed to tell the Ukrainians “in a very harsh way” that “the relationship [between the U.S. and Ukraine] would be soured…they would stop giving them any kind of aid” unless the investigation into Biden was announced. While the efforts were first focused on the U.S. refusing to show support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s administration, the ultimate decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine, Parnas alleged, was Trump’s. “The aid itself was something that I think the president decided to do,” Parnas said, saying it was a “reaction” to the Ukrainians’ continued refusal to announce an investigation.
And Trump wasn’t the only one that Parnas implicated. Parnas said that Vice President Mike Pence cancelling a planned trip to Zelensky’s inauguration was a direct result of Ukraine not announcing the Biden investigation, and that the vice president was fully aware of what was going on. When Maddow asked whether Pence was aware of the quid pro quo arrangement, Parnas responded, “I’m gonna use a famous quote by [Ambassador Gordon Sondland]: ‘Everybody was in the loop’.” “He couldn’t have not known,” Parnas said about Pence. Parnas also made the case for why former adviser John Bolton should testify, alleging that Bolton “has a lot to say.” “I know Mr. Bolton was definitely involved in the loop,” Parnas said, citing how Bolton “butt[ed] heads” with Giuliani. “He knows what happened there.”