Trump impeachment: President 'knew exactly what was going on' in Ukraine, says associate of Rudy Giuliani
President Trump “knew exactly what was going on” in a scheme to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, according to an associate of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.
Lev Parnas, a Republican donor who was indicted for campaign finance violations, made the explosive allegations in an interview on US television on Wednesday night.
It comes as the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to send across the articles of impeachment to the Senate, triggering the president's trial which will begin next week.
Mr Parnas told MSNBC that he delivered an ultimatum in May to the incoming president of Ukraine that no senior US officials would attend his inauguration and all American aid to the country would be withheld if an investigation into Mr Biden was not announced.
The day after Mr Parnas said he delivered the message, the State Department announced that Mike Pence, the US vice-president, would no longer be attending the inauguration of Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president.
Mr Parnas alleged that Mr Trump ordered Mr Pence to stay away at the behest of Mr Giuliani to send a clear message to the incoming Ukrainian administration that they needed to take seriously the demand for an investigation into Mr Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate seen as a potential threat to Mr Trump’s re-election in 2020.
Mr Parnas said every communication he had with Mr Zelensky’s team was at the direction of Mr Giuliani, whom he regularly overheard briefing Mr Trump about their progress by phone.
“President Trump knew exactly what was going on," said Mr Parnas, a Florida businessman. "He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani, or the President.”
If true, Mr Parnas’s account undercuts a key defence of Mr Trump's impeachment fight that the president's withholding of aid to Ukraine last summer was not in related to a investigation into Mr Biden because Mr Zelensky did not know the money was being withheld.
Giuliani called Parnas’s statements “sad."
“I feel sorry for him,” Giuliani told the Associated Press on Wednesday night. “I thought he was an honourable man. I was wrong.”
Mr Parnas said he also heard Mr Giuliani and another Trump-aligned defence lawyer, Victoria Toensing, briefing William Barr, the attorney-general, by phone about their efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to announce the investigation into Mr Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings.
Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said Mr Parnas’s claims were “100 per cent false.”
The new accusations came as House Democrats made public a trove of documents, text messages and photos from Mr Parnas’s smartphones that appear to verify parts of his account.
A House committee chairman said on Wednesday that his panel will investigate what he says are “profoundly alarming” text messages among the newly disclosed materials that have raised questions about the possible surveillance of the former ambassador to Ukraine before she was ousted by the Trump administration last spring.
The messages show that a Trump donor named Robert F Hyde disparaged Marie Yovanovitch in messages to Mr Parnas and gave him updates on her location and cellphone use.
Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Wednesday that the messages “suggest a possible risk" to Ms Yovanovitch’s security in Kiev before she was recalled from her post.
“These threats occurred at the same time that the two men were also discussing President Trump’s efforts, through Rudy Giuliani, to smear the ambassador’s reputation," Mr Engel said.
Mr Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman, both US citizens who emigrated from the former Soviet Union, were indicted last year on charges of conspiracy, making false statements and falsification of records.
Prosecutors allege that they made large campaign donations to Republican causes after receiving millions of dollars originating from Russia. The men have pleaded not guilty.
