Pierce: I Wouldn't Let Lev Parnas Park My Car. But He's a Witness.
I Wouldn't Let Lev Parnas Park My Car. But He's a Witness.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani's henchman in Ukraine is nobody's idea of a hero, but he kept receipts.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JAN 16, 2020
Let me be perfectly clear. I would not buy an apple from Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani’s running buddy in the Ukraine and (apparently) a former unofficial emissary from El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago. He is indeed under federal indictment. All of this is true now that he’s doing this very odd media tour as The Man Who Kept Receipts. I wouldn’t let him park my car.
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This, of course, was in reference to the administration*’s withholding of vital military aid from Ukraine unless that country’s president agreed to help this country’s president* ratfck the 2020 presidential election. That aid was the biggest club the claque of extortionists in the White House sought to wield. It also gives the White House something else to cover up, which is both another crime and another abuse of power. And it’s one more crucial piece of evidence on the side of the case that says this administration* is capable of almost anything—including, it must be said, relying on a skeevy international bagman like Lev Parnas.
Now, as for Lev himself, the fact-witness with the struggling combover and the David Ferrie eyebrows, I’d say that, by and large, he’s been dealing straight with his interviewers, although Charlie Savage’s cautions on MSNBC Thursday morning are well-taken. On the events for which he already has provided documents, he seems to be telling the truth, and much of what he said were backed up by previous witnesses like Bill Taylor and Fiona Hill. He did crack open a new line of inquiry when he told kindly Doc Maddow that holding up the military aid was, in fact, the second quid pro quo demanded by the administration*. The first, he said, involved a visit that Vice President Mike Pence was supposed to make to Ukraine that was cancelled, according to Parnas, when Ukraine held off on investigating the Bidens as the White House demanded. This also seems completely consonant with what we already know.
The most conspicuously dodgy part of Parnas’s interview was the way he handled the matter of surveillance (or worse) of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. It is more than clear that removing Yovanovitch was central to the White House scheme. But Parnas went vague on the involvement of Robert Hyde, the Connecticut Republican whose messages to Parnas seemed to indicate a knowledge of Yovanovitch’s movements and also ominously claimed you can get anything done in Ukraine “for a price.” Parnas dismissed Hyde as an obnoxious drunk—which, to be fair, he seems to be—but on the substance of Hyde’s claims, Parnas went into a fog.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30549918/lev-parnas-ukraine-trump-rudy-giuliani/
= new reply since forum marked as read
I agree with everything you said here. 
