Lev Parnas Takes One More Stab At Testifying Before A Senate That Doesn't Care

Mary Papenfuss
Updated ·2 min read

Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associate Lev Parnas reiterated in an interview with MSNBC on Friday that he can link President Donald Trump and several other White House officials — including Attorney General William Barr — to the scheme to pressure Ukraine to smear the president’s political rival Joe Biden.

“I can’t wait until more of [former national security adviser John Bolton’s] book comes out about what Bolton spoke to Barr about, because Barr knew exactly what Giuliani and we were doing there,” Parnas told Ari Melber.

The Ukrainian American businessman and Trump campaign donor has said he worked to pressure Ukrainian officials to launch an investigation into unfounded accusations against Biden. He said he was following the president’s wishes, as communicated to him by Rudy Giuliani.

He knows who was involved in the Ukraine operation because he was “on the ground” and because he worked directly with Giuliani, “who was the president’s right hand to mastermind the whole plan,” he told Melber.

But before Parnas talked to Melber, the GOP-led Senate voted 51-49 not to call a single witness in Trump’s impeachment trial over the Ukraine scheme. It’s the first impeachment trial in history not to include witnesses.

Yet Parnas could still cause problems for officials he implicates.

Parnas’ attorney, Joseph Bondy, sent a letter to GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday before the vote noting that Parnas was willing to testify. Parnas would provide testimony “based upon personal knowledge, corroborated by physical evidence including text messages, phone records, documentary evidence, and travel records, which is directly relevant to the president’s impeachment inquiry,” Bondy wrote in the letter.

Parnas would provide information involving the president and a long list of top Trump administration officials and Republican figures, according to the letter.

Listen to Lev Parnas name names in the the interview up top.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.