House committees investigating President Trump will release documents provided by Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas to the Senate for its upcoming impeachment trial, the panels said in a Tuesday release.
The panels will also provide the documents to House Republicans and the White House.
House Democrats released some of the documents provided to the House Judiciary, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs Committees on Sunday by Parnas attorney Joseph Bondy, which he received from Manhattan federal prosecutor during the pretrial discovery phase of Parnas’s prosecution on criminal campaign finance charges.
The document dump opens with a handwritten note on a Ritz-Carlton Vienna-branded notepad. “Get Zalensky (sic) to Announce that the Biden case will be investigated,” the note reads.
Another note on a Ritz Carlton Vienna notepad appears to relate to Parnas’ engagement as an “interpreter” for Dmytro Firtash, the Ukrainian gas billionaire. The note contemplates hiring a “lobbiest,” naming two lobbyists as possible options.
The release includes a number of previously unseen documents, including a May 10 letter from Giuliani to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, asking for a meeting with the then-incoming leader as “private counsel to President Donald J. Trump.”
In the letter, Giuliani asks that Zelensky meet with him and Victoria Toensing, an attorney for Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash and frequent defender of the President on TV.
Parnas’ texts also show that Parnas restarted communication with Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky in September 2019. It’s not clear what the pair discussed; the texts show Kolomoisky telling Parnas “there’s news,” while the Giuliani associated replies that he will call the oligarch later.
Giuliani later met with a series of Kolomoisky’s associates while visiting Kyiv in December 2019.
Parnas’s texts have not been corroborated by any other source. Giuliani has declined to comply with House demands for relevant information.
The last page of the documents includes a letter from an attorney for Trump saying that the President “consents” to another former lawyer of his representing Parnas and Fruman. The President, who has been photographed with the pair, has maintained that he doesn’t know the men.
“The President consents to allowing your representation of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman,” reads an email in the document release, sent from Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers, to John Dowd, who represented Trump during Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Parnas’ then-attorney Edward MacMahon raised concerns about executive privilege in his first court appearance because Giuliani, who Parnas worked with, was also representing Trump.
Nothing ultimately came of that concern, but this new email suggests that the President may have personally approved his former lawyer signing on to represent Giuliani’s fixers in Ukraine.
The texts also show communications between Parnas and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. In one March 22 message – sent after The Hill columnist John Solomon began publishing interviews with Lutsenko in which he disparaged Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and the Bidens – Lutsenko tells Parnas “it’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam, you’re bringing into doubt all of my allegations. Including about B.”
Lutsenko has repeatedly referred to Yovanovitch as “Madam Yovanovitch,” while Lutsenko references the companies “Burisma” and “seneca” in the same exchange – both of which are central to the conspiracy theories against the Bidens.
These documents were released en masse by the committees and have not been independently verified.
In one May 2 message, Parnas appeared to suggest to a Ukrainian minister that “some people from Congress” would accompany Giuliani on his then-scheduled May trip to Kyiv.
“These documents—and those recently released pursuant to Freedom of Information Act—demonstrate that there is more evidence relevant to the President’s scheme, but they have been concealed by the President himself,” House Democrats said in a statement. “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.”
Read the documents here:
