In the days since Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associate Lev Parnas made the television rounds to insist (emphatically) that Donald Trump was fully aware of the operation to conjure an excuse to oust Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in order to clear the way for investigations into the president’s political rivals, Trump has variously insisted that he doesn’t know Parnas.
That, despite all manner of pictures of the two men together.
“He’s a conman… I don’t know him, other than he’s sort of like a groupie. He shows up at fundraisers. I don’t know anything about him”, an exasperated Trump declared, during an irritated press conference in Davos on Wednesday.
He made similar comments last week: “I don’t know Parnas other than I guess I had pictures taken, which I do with thousands of people, including people today that I didn’t meet. But I just met him. I don’t know him at all. Don’t know what he’s about, don’t know where he comes from, know nothing about him”.
Again, all of that is wholly ridiculous.
The idea that Trump doesn’t know the two men (Parnas and Igor Fruman) who were effectively working for him in the effort to gin up a reason to remove Yovanovitch and smear the Bidens is patently absurd. And even if you were inclined to believe it, here are a couple of Facebook posts that might change your mind:
There are quite literally dozens more where those came from.
And now there’s an audio tape, apparently.
“The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She’s still left over from the Clinton administration”, Parnas can be heard telling Trump, on the tape obtained by ABC.
The recording was allegedly made by Fruman, during what sources describe as “an intimate April 30, 2018 dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.”
“She’s basically walking around telling everybody ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait”, Parnas says to Trump.
(Yovanovitch, by the way, is not “left over from Clinton”. She’s been in the State Department since the Reagan years.)
Trump subsequently freaks out. “Get rid of her!”, Trump exclaims. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it”.
That was nearly a year before the ambassador was finally recalled amid an egregious smear campaign. Multiple former and current US government officials who testified both in public and behind closed doors in October and November told lawmakers that the allegations against Yovanovitch were entirely meritless. Yovanovitch herself testified twice, once in private and then in public, on national television.
“Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American Ambassador who does not give them what they want”, she said.
During his truth tour this month, Parnas seemingly dismissed claims that Yovanovitch was corrupt or somehow disloyal. “The only motivation” was to brush her aside to pave way for the Biden probe, he told MSNBC.
House investigators last week released a cache of bizarre Whatsapp messages between Parnas and Trump donor Robert Hyde, who suggested he was actively having Yovanovitch tailed in Kiev. Parnas dismissed Hyde as a drunk, and said he never took the messages seriously. Nevertheless, Ukraine is investigating.
As for Trump, Parnas told Rachel Maddow the president “knew exactly what was going on”.
“He was aware of all my movements. … I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president”, he went on to say, adding that “it was all about Joe [and] Hunter Biden. It was never about corruption”.
ABC says a copy of the audio recording is “now in the custody of federal prosecutors in New York’s Southern District”. They declined to comment.
Read more:
Giuliani Associate Parnas, Hyde Had Ambassador Yovanovitch Tailed In Ukraine
Sounds a heckuva lot like a high crime/misdemeanor to me. #MAGA
Got to get it on the news nationally. Even if the Republicans debunk it as fake it’ll be in people’s minds.
I agree. The Dems should be playing to the public jury, not R Senators.
Get all this new evidence all over the news sites
MATFA – Make America Trump Free Again
“Take her out.”
There is only a bad spin and a terrible spin on that statement. I’m sure Nunes will say Trump just wanted Parnas to have a date with her.
Interesting. When having dinner with POTUS smart people wear a wire.
so potus is telling a private citizen to ‘take her out’?? potus can remove any ambassador he wants for any reason. is/was he too ignorant to know this?
on the trial: if he’s removed then Pence is prez and all his religious extremists with him. is it possible to find him guilty and not remove him?
“An Even Fewer Good Men” by Paul Miller
Alec Baldwin as Trump: You want answers?!
DeNiro as Adam Schiff: I want the truth!
Trump: You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a country that’s gonna have walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Rep Schiff? I have a greater ego than you can possibly fathom.
You don’t want the truth. You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a House Representative who rises and sleeps under the Ukrainian money Congress provides, then questions the manner in which I provide it.
Schiff: Did you order the Hunter Biden investigation prior to releasing the funds?
Trump: Ghoul-liani did the job I sent him to do.
Schiff: Did you order the code red?
Trump: You’re goddamn right I did!
Republican jurors: In light of this confession, the defendant is acquitted anyway, and offered a sincere apology by the U.S. Senate
I’m curious how this tape plays into the larger case and the larger narrative. While the tone of the conversation is “really gross” to my ears, it does seem like POTUS could choose to “take her out” anytime he wanted, right?
So unless I’m missing a nuance, it seems like the big takeaway from this singular piece of information is that it blows an even bigger hole in his already Swiss-cheese like story that he doesn’t know Parnas.
Then again for all I know Trump may have conversations like that with his cashier at McDonald’s and could truthfully say he doesn’t know her….
Moscow mitch is deaf!