Talking to Lev

If you read my posts enough, you know that I try not to let The Rachel Maddow Show drive my topics too much.  I am a constant viewer, and Rachel does an outstanding job of prepping and analyzing issues, problems, and events.  She always gets the viewer thinking, and I don’t want to try to compete with all of that.  

But her interview of Lev Parnas on Wednesday and Thursday nights is too good to pass up.

Transmission 

Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the two Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for trial.  Pelosi created a great deal of controversy. She held the Articles after their passage in the House on December 19^th.  The actually “transmission” of those Articles via hand delivery to the Senate Chamber took place on January 15^th.  The Congress was out of session, gone to Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever, from December 20^th to January 6^th. That didn’t seem to matter to Pelosi’s critics.

But the delay worked in the Speaker’s favor.  While they were out, key witness John Bolton signaled that he would be willing to testify.  Emails from the Office of Management of Budget and the Defense Department (released not to the House Committees but to the media through a Freedom of Information Act request) further confirmed the President’s orders to withhold money from Ukraine.  And this week, the General Accounting Office ruled that holding the Ukraine funds was against the law.

  In addition, the Courts ordered the Justice Department to return documents and cell phones to Lev Parnas. He was the “button man” in the Rudy Giuliani pressure campaign in Ukraine.  Parnas and his attorney then turned that information over to the House Intelligence Committee, who released a lot of it to the public.  It also went into the package of evidence going to the Senate.

New Evidence

That evidence included a letter from Giuliani to newly elected Ukrainian President Zelenskiy. That letter confirmed that Giuliani was acting as private counsel to Donald Trump, President of the United States.  There were also notes from phone calls, confirming that “the deal” was to get Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens.

Parnas also had a series of recovered text messages confirming much of his work in Ukraine.  There were also disturbing texts from Republican Congressional candidate Robert Hyde. They implied that Hyde was following US Ambassador Yovanovitch and even hinting that “…if you want her out” it could be arranged.

Lev Speaks

But the big reveal came in Rachel’s interview.  Parnas laid out the following points.

1. From the beginning Giuliani’s plan was to get the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens, not Ukrainian corruption. And President Trump knew every move.
2. Giuliani and Parnas were empowered to speak for the President of the United States.
3. When Ambassador Sondland testified, “…everybody was in the loop,” that included not just Trump and Mulvaney, but Bolton and Vice President Pence as well.
4. The Giuliani “team” included not just Parnas and Fruman, but also “Fox Attorneys” Joe DiGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing. Congressman Devin Nunes and his staff, and Attorney General Bill Barr were involved as well.
5. One of their goals was to strike a deal with then Ukrainian Prosecutor Lutsenko.  He wanted Ambassador Yovanovitch removed in exchange for dirt on Biden.  Yovanovitch was removed.
6. That when Lutsenko failed to give them the dirt and was removed by Zelenskiy, they needed to cut a new “deal”.
7. Money for Ukrainian defense and perhaps even more importantly US recognition was what Ukraine wanted.  That was the “quid” for the Biden investigation “quo”, and everybody on the team and in the loop, knew it.
8. That Parnas was trying to cut a deal with oligarch Dimitry Firtash.   US charges against Firtash would be dropped, if Firtash would help get “Biden Dirt”. And everyone, DiGenova, Toensing, and Parnas would make a whole lot of money in the process.

Ignore at Your Peril

It’s pretty damning testimony – and information that the Republican Senate doesn’t seem to want to hear.  There are some caveats however.  Parnas is accused of a felony, illegal campaign contributions. These are  similar to the charges that put Trump attorney Michael Cohen in prison for three years.  That raises the bar on questions about his credibility.  And some of his accusations, like a lot of the House Intelligence Committee testimony, is second hand. “Rudy said the President said” and “Victoria and Joe said Attorney General Barr said”; are definitely one step away from first hand information.

But it all fills in gaps in an overall tale. The President looked for dirt on Joe Biden and used the powers of the Presidency to try to get it.  The Senate needs to hear this obvious story.  If they don’t, then they are like little kids, sticking fingers in their ears and yelling “♫ La, La, La, La, La ♫” so they can’t hear the truth.  

There will be a price to pay for such intentional ignorance.  If it doesn’t happen in the hallowed Senate hall, then it may well happen at the ballot box on November 3^rd.