https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...0pm:homepage/story-ans&tid=lk_inline_manual_2 Ukraine prosecutor offered information related to Biden in exchange for ambassador’s ouster, newly released materials show New materials released by House Democrats appear to show Ukraine’s top prosecutor offering an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. The text messages and documents provided to Congress by former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas also show that before the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was removed from her post, a Parnas associate now running for Congress sent menacing text messages suggesting that he had Yovanovitch under surveillance in Ukraine. A lawyer for Yovanovitch said Tuesday that the episode should be investigated. The cache of materials released by House investigators late Tuesday exposed a number of previously unknown details about efforts by Giuliani and his associates to obtain material in Ukraine that would undermine Trump’s Democratic opponents. Their emergence on the eve of the Senate impeachment trial spurred Democrats to renew calls for the White House to turn over documents related to the Ukraine pressure campaign that it has refused to share with Congress. Among the revelations in the documents released Tuesday: a message from Giuliani to Parnas saying he had involved a person he called “no 1” — possibly Trump himself — in an effort to lift a U.S. visa ban on a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was planning to come to the United States to make claims about Biden. In gambit for Trump, Giuliani engaged parade of Ukrainian prosecutors The materials also include a letter Giuliani wrote to Ukraine’s then-president-elect, Volodymyr Zelensky, requesting a May 14 meeting with the new leader in Giuliani’s “capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent.” Giuliani scrapped his planned trip, and the meeting never took place. Another document released by the House investigators appears to show Parnas directly involved with efforts to get Zelensky to announce investigations related to Biden. In handwritten notes on a piece of stationery from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Vienna, Parnas wrote, “get Zalenksy [sic] to Annouce [sic] that the Biden case will be Investigated.” “All of this new evidence confirms what we already know: the President and his associates pressured Ukrainian officials to announce investigations that would benefit the President politically,” the chairs of the House Intelligence, Oversight, Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees said in a joint statement. “There cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate without the documents that President Trump is refusing to provide to Congress.” Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment. The White House declined to comment. Read: Materials provided by Giuliani associate Lev Parnas to the House The materials show that Parnas, a Russian-speaker who helped coordinate Giuliani’s outreach to Ukrainian sources, was directly communicating with an array of top Ukrainian officials. Among them was Yuri Lutsenko, at the time Ukraine’s top prosecutor and a close political ally of then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who was running for reelection. Lutsenko wanted to get rid of Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador, in part because she had been critical of his office and supported a quasi-independent anti-corruption bureau he despised. The messages, written in Russian, show Lutsenko urging Parnas to force out Yovanovitch in exchange for cooperation regarding Biden. At one point, Lutsenko suggests he won’t make any helpful public statements unless “madam” is removed. “It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam — you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B,” Lutsenko wrote to Parnas in a March 22 message on WhatsApp. It’s unclear if ‘B’ is a reference to Biden or Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served from 2014 to 2019. Four days later, Lutsenko told Parnas that work on the case against the owner of the gas company is proceeding successfully and evidence of the money transfers of “B” had been obtained. “And here you can’t even remove one fool ” Lutsenko laments, again appearing to push for Yovanovitch’s ouster. “She’s not a simple fool[,] trust me,” Parnas responded. “But she’s not getting away.” Parnas, days later, told Lutsenko that “soon everything will turn around and we’ll be on the right course.” Lutsenko responded that he has copies of payments Burisma made to the investment firm co-founded by Biden’s son Hunter. The following month, Yovanovitch was removed from her post at Giuliani’s urging. Lutsenko later said publicly that he found no evidence of wrongdoing under Ukrainian law by Hunter or Joe Biden. A spokeswoman for Lutsenko did not respond to a message requesting comment. How the impeachment inquiry has revealed a long and murky campaign to oust a veteran U.S. ambassador The new documents also introduced a new character in the drama over the ambassador’s ouster: a Republican congressional candidate from Connecticut who asserted to Parnas in messages that he had Yovanovitch under physical and electronic surveillance. “Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this b----,” Robert F. Hyde wrote in an encrypted message to Parnas on March 23. “I’ll get right [on] that.” Hyde described having contact with a “private security” team located near the embassy that was apparently monitoring the ambassador’s movements. “She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off,” he wrote in one message. “They will let me know when she’s on the move,” he said in another. Later, he alerted Parnas that he had been told Yovanovitch would not be moved to a “special security unit.” “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” he said in one note. “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money . . . what I was told.” Hyde did not explain how his team might “help” Parnas, who responded only with “lol.” When asked for comment by The Washington Post in a text message, Hyde replied: “Sorry I can’t talk right now.” In a statement, Joseph A. Bondy, a lawyer for Parnas, said, “There is no evidence that Mr. Parnas participated, agreed, paid money or took any other steps in furtherance of Mr. Hyde’s proposals.” Hyde is one of three Republicans running to unseat an incumbent Democrat in the 5th Congressional District in Connecticut. He frequently tweets about his support for Trump and posted photos of himself with the president. Lawrence S. Robbins, a Yovanovitch attorney, said in a statement: “Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing. We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.” During his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Trump denigrated Yovanovitch. “Well, she’s going to go through some things,” Trump told the Ukrainian leader. Yovanovitch testified that she was devastated by the president’s comments and felt threatened by them. The newly released documents also detail Giuliani’s involvement in trying to secure a U.S. visa for Lutsenko’s predecessor, Viktor Shokin, who has alleged that Biden asked Poroshenko to fire him because he was investigating the owner of Burisma at the time. Biden has denied the allegation, saying he pushed for Shokin’s firing as part of U.S. anti-corruption policy toward Ukraine, consistent with a broad consensus among U.S. and European officials at the time that he was failing to reform the country’s corrupt judicial system. Shokin was fired, after Biden’s urging, in March 2016. Parnas was hoping to bring Shokin to the United States to meet with Giuliani and record his claims against Biden, but the U.S. Embassy, then run by Yovanovitch, had blocked Shokin’s visa. In January of last year, Parnas texted Giuliani to say the embassy had denied the visa. “I can revive it,” Giuliani replied. A day later, after the visa still hadn’t come through, Giuliani assured Parnas: “It’s going to work I have no 1 in (sic) it.” Shokin didn’t receive a visa. Instead, he gave a statement to Giuliani over the phone. The trove of documents also appears to include Giuliani’s first formal outreach to Zelensky. On May 10, he wrote to the president-elect personally, identifying himself as Trump’s private lawyer and asking for a meeting at which he would be accompanied by Victoria Toensing, a Washington lawyer who assisted Giuliani in the early phases of the Biden-related inquiry. The missive came after Parnas made overtures to an array of top Ukrainian officials, including Ivan Bakanov, a close aide to Zelensky who is now head of Ukraine’s intelligence agency, in an effort to secure cooperation from the new Ukrainian leadership. At one point, Parnas expressed frustration that the connection had not been established. “Please let me know what’s happening and why we have not been able to do the call yet,” he wrote. On May 9, Parnas sent Bakanov a New York Times article that described Giuliani’s agenda for a planned trip to Ukraine, including the former New York mayor’s interest in investigating the Biden family. Giuliani later scrapped the trip, telling Fox News he was convinced Zelensky was surrounded by enemies of Trump and enemies of the United States. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...iani-have-demolished-trumps-claims-innocence/ Lev Parnas and Rudy Giuliani have demolished Trump’s claims of innocence New documents show why the president has been trying to hide evidence from Congress Americans who have been wondering why President Trump has taken the extraordinary step of trying to block every document from being released to Congress in his impeachment inquiry need wonder no longer. The new documents released Tuesday evening by the House Intelligence Committee were devastating to Trump’s continuing — if shifting — defense of his Ukraine extortion scandal, just days before his impeachment trial is likely to begin in the Senate. These new documents demolish at least three key defenses to which Trump and his allies have been clinging: that he was really fighting corruption when he pressured Ukraine on matters related to the Biden family; that Hunter Biden should be called as a witness at the Senate impeachment trial; and that there’s no need for a real, honest-to-goodness trial in the Senate. The most basic principles of constitutional law require relevant information, including documents and executive branch witnesses, to be turned over to Congress in an impeachment proceeding. Particularly because sitting presidents cannot be indicted, impeachment is the only immediate remedy we the people have against a lawless president. For that remedy to have any teeth, relevant information has to be provided. That’s why President James Polk said that, during impeachment, Congress could “penetrate into the most secret recesses of the Executive Departments … command the attendance of any and every agent of the Government, and compel them to produce all papers, public or private, official or unofficial.” No president, not even Richard Nixon, thought he could just say “no” to impeachment. That’s why the House added Article II to Trump’s impeachment: “Obstruction of Congress.” It was a response to an unprecedented attempt by Trump to hide the truth. New evidence for impeachment keeps turning up. That's why we need a real trial. The documents released Tuesday show what Trump has been so afraid of. For starters, they prove that Trump’s already-eyebrow-raising claim to have been fighting corruption in Ukraine was bogus. Notes taken by an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, Lev Parnas — now facing federal criminal charges — show what his and Giuliani’s mission was when they got in touch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “get Zalensky to Announce that the Biden case will Be Investigated.” Look hard at the real goal here: not to prompt an investigation of Hunter Biden, but to score an announcement of a Biden investigation. Pursuing an announcement, rather than an investigation, makes sense only if Trump’s objective was to dirty the reputation of a leading political rival, Joe Biden. Both of us served in high-ranking Justice Department positions; we’ve never heard of an investigation that is kept from the Justice Department, given to a private attorney and then publicly announced — investigations work best when done in secret. If Trump, as he has long claimed, was truly interested in pursuing anticorruption in the bizarrely specific form of a single investigation of a single American citizen, then he would have wanted an actual investigation. Instead, Trump was fixated on the public announcement of one — which, if anything, would have harmed the investigation by tipping off its subject. The public announcement would have helped only one thing: Trump’s personal political prospects.
A quid pro quo for a quid pro quo. During the hearings it was a puzzle why Ambassador Y was ousted, because the Ukrainian prosecutor guy wanted her gone, not the US admin side. What is extra astounding is that three, maybe four of Trump's lawyers in the impeachment trial are directly implicated in the matter of the investigation. And you can add Nunes and Pence to that. It seems Trump's legal team are trying to get under the guns, be in the trial so it is more complex/confusing to the general public to call them as the witnesses and partners to crime they are.
Here are 7 explosive claims from Lev Parnas’ interview with Rachel Maddow blowing up the Ukraine scandal In his first media appearance, Lev Parnas — an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a key player in President Donald Trump’s impeachment — gave an explosive interview this week, aired Wednesday night, to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. As is often the case in Trump scandals, the person who has now turned against the president is himself a shady character who is credibly accused of federal crimes, which makes it necessary to treat his claims with due skepticism. Though some of his allegations are corroborated by records and evidence, others are not. Some of his allegations rely on vague allegations and assumptions and given they come from a source with unclear motivations, they should not be taken as definitive fact. But they are in the public record now, and they deserve to be considered. As the Senate gears up for Trump’s impeachment trial, it sets the stage for a testing ground for the accuracy of Parnas’ claims and those of other witnesses. Maddow also revealed that she will air a second part of the interview the following night. Here are seven of the most explosive claims Parnas made. 1. “President Trump knew exactly what was going on,” Parnas said. “He was aware of all of my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president.” Trump has claimed that he doesn’t know who Parnas or his associate, Igor Fruman, are, despite appearing in multiple pictures with him. There was already good reason to assume this was false, but Parnas has not directly rebutted the dubious claim on the record. 2. “It was not about corruption,” Parnas said of the Ukraine scheme. “It was all about Burisma, all about Biden, about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.” This claim completely undercuts the Republicans’ key defenses of the president against impeachment. They say he was legitimately pursuing an anti-corruption policy in Ukraine by asking for investigations of his political enemies. That was hard to believe on its own, but now Parnas is flatly contradicting it. 3. Parnas said it was clear to the Ukrainians he was acting as Trump’s emissary. “Did anybody in the U.S. government or Mr. Giuliani actually convey to officials in Ukraine that you were there as a representative of President Trump?” Maddow asked. “Yes,” said Parnas. “Absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone.” Giuliani told Maddow that this “never” happened and called Parnas a “sad situation.” 4. He said he made explicit to Ukrainian officials that Trump’s support and financial support — not just military aid — was dependent on an announcement of the investigations the president wanted. “It wasn’t just military aid,” Parnas said. “It was all aid. Basically their relationships would be sour. That we would stop giving them any kind of aid.” 5. Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Ukraine was canceled explicitly to induce the country to announce the investigations, Parnas said. Parnas said that the cancellation of Pence’s trip confirmed to the Ukrainians that he was a legitimate representative of the president. He also said that Pence was “in the loop” about the reason the trip was canceled, but he didn’t explicitly say how he knew this. He just indicated the top players were all aware of the plot. Pence’s later trip to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was arranged to get the country to announce the investigations Trump wanted, Parnas said. However, Pence has denied trying to get Zelensky to conduct the investigations. 6. Attorney General Bill Barr was “on the team.” Barr has also tried to distance himself entirely from the Ukraine scandal. But Parnas claimed that “Barr had to know about everything” regarding the plan to push Ukraine to investigate the Biden and the 2016 presidential election. He acknowledged, though, that he didn’t speak to Barr directly. Maddow pointed out that, in his infamous July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Trump specifically brought up Barr as being involved. Parnas said that didn’t surprise him, because Barr was “on the team.” The Justice Department, responding to Maddow’s request for comment on the allegations, said simply: “100 percent false.” 7. Parnas also fingered Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) in the scheme, the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee that investigated the Ukraine matter. Parnas said he was introduced to, and worked through, Nunes aide Derek Harvey, but he was working on Nunes’ behalf. “Does it strike you as unusual or inappropriate that Devin Nunes would be one of the lead investigators?” Maddow asked. “I was in shock when I was watching the hearings and when I saw Devin Nunes sitting up there,” Parnas said. “Because they were involved in getting all this stuff on Biden.” Frame this . . . . . . explain it to your grandchildren.
Lock Him Up.. Bill Barr urged to ‘retain a criminal defense attorney’ after Lev Parnas bombshells Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who is facing federal campaign finance charges, has been outspoken about the Ukraine scandal this week — granting interviews to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Anderson Cooper and discussing Giuliani’s efforts to get the Ukrainian government to officially announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Parnas has not only discussed President Donald Trump and Giuliani’s roles in the Ukraine scandal, but also, Attorney General William Barr’s. And according to former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi, Barr would do well to consult a defense attorney.
This will be over in a few weeks. If the Senate votes to include witnesses the GOP will subpoena Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Adam Schiff etc. Its not going to be a motion to dismiss but it isn't going to be another set of hearings either. Cases will be presented and the Senate will vote to convict or acquit. I don't see a drawn out process here.