The scandal burned far longer than eight days and nights.
A miracle. https://t.co/CxqSbhATWF
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) November 16, 2019
… At least, if you’re a member of the Trump Crime Cartel:
Among the many guests who had their pictures taken with President Donald Trump at the White House’s annual Hanukkah party last year were two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.
In the picture, which Parnas posted on social media, he and Fruman are seen smiling alongside Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer.
At one point during the party that night, Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a large reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani, according to two acquaintances in whom Parnas confided right after the meeting…
Eventually, according to what Parnas told his confidants, the topic turned to Ukraine that night. According to those two confidants, Parnas said that “the big guy,” as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and Fruman with what Parnas described as “a secret mission” to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter…
To Parnas, the chain of command was clear: Giuliani would issue the President’s directives while Parnas, who speaks fluent Russian, would be an on-the-ground investigator alongside Fruman, who has numerous business contacts in Ukraine.
“Parnas viewed the assignment as a great crusade,” says one of the people in whom Parnas confided. “He believed he was doing the right thing for Trump.”
The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment to a series of questions regarding the meeting and Trump’s relationship with Parnas and Fruman…
Ken McCallion, a former federal prosecutor with numerous high-level clients in Ukraine, including former and current government officials, told CNN that he’s heard a similar story about the Hanukkah party encounter. Parnas told some of McCallion’s clients and contacts in Ukraine about the encounter. “Parnas told everyone in Ukraine about the White House meeting. He was adamant he was ‘their guy’ — that they chose him to be their ambassador in Ukraine,” McCallion said.
And in February this year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Parnas and Fruman met with the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and then Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. During that meeting, they extended Poroshenko an invitation for a State dinner at the White House, if he would commit to publicly opening investigations in Ukraine.
The December meeting at the White House is not the first report of Parnas and the President discussing Ukraine. The Washington Post has reported that in April 2018 at a small fundraising dinner in a suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Parnas told Trump that the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was unfriendly to him and his interests. Trump, according to the Post report, which cited people familiar with Parnas’ account of the event, suggested that Yovanovitch should be fired.
A year later in May 2019, Yovanovitch was recalled from her post…
Sending underlings to do crimes is routine dishonesty; what makes it Trumpian is choosing Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman as the bagmen.
— SecretMissionHat (@Popehat) November 16, 2019
Of course, because this is Donald Trump, he’s insisting he doesn’t even remember shaking this Parnasassanian dude’s hand, whoever the guy thinks he is — one of errand boy Giuliani’s skeevy little chums, perhaps. With equally predictable blowback (from Parnas, if not yet Rudy):
… However he felt back then, those two sources say Parnas now feels quite differently about Trump. The day after Parnas and Fruman were arrested on October 9 and charged with criminal campaign finance violations, Trump publicly denied ever knowing them, a move that was enormously upsetting to Parnas, according to three sources close to him.
“I don’t know those gentlemen,” Trump told reporters from the South Lawn of the White House on October 10. “Maybe they were clients of Rudy. You’d have to ask Rudy, I just don’t know.”
In the weeks since his arrest, Parnas has become disenchanted with Trump, these sources say. He’s even signaled that he’s willing to cooperate with the Congressional impeachment inquiry. Parnas’ lawyer Bondy said his client would comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry in a manner that would allow him to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Prosecutors allege Parnas and Fruman illegally funded Republican politicians and campaigns with money from foreign nationals. Prosecutors also say the pair funneled $325,000 into Trump’s flagship super PAC, America First Action from an unknown source.
Both Parnas and Fruman have pleaded not guilty and are currently out on bail and on house arrest in Florida awaiting trial…
Last December, the day before the Hannukah meeting at the White House, Giuliani brought Parnas as his guest to the funeral of former president George H.W. Bush.
Now, Giuliani and Parnas snipe at each other through their lawyers…
How can the president be an anti-Semite if he was plotting an international criminal conspiracy at a Hanukkah party?! https://t.co/bMgKFNLIXP
— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) November 16, 2019
Follow the money…
Pretty sure Trump’s Hanukkah mtg w Lev, Igor, & Rudy at the White House was a campaign finance violation.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 16, 2019
Jay C
Yeah, but it was during Hanukkah, so any complaints about it are obviously motivated by antisemitism….
(this is sarc, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it, or some variation on it, seriously retweeted somewhere, sometime soon)
Jay C
OK: site gripe:
I posted comment No. 1, but after hitting “Post Comment” the page reverted to the OP, without my comment.
When I refreshed the page, it duly showed up.
ADD: but when I added Post No. 2, it showed up immediately
ADD 2: but showed up without “edit Comment” function
MattF
The caption on that picture must be ‘Innocence Personified’.
Baud
It’s the Festival of Slights.
bbleh
Yabbut this is all second-hand from the Lying Media, plus who would trust this Parnas guy cuz he’s been indicted and everybody knows that people who have been indicted are guilty (except for the people Mueller indicted cuz they were set up), and besides what about the serrrverrrr and the eeeeemails and the kissie-kissie-humpa-humpa FBI Loverssss? And anyway, while it may have been regrettable, it’s not impeachable, and besides he’s too dumb to have done anything really wrong.
debbie
Does anyone listen to Harry Shearer’s NPR program (here, it’s every Sunday at 1pm)? Since Trump’s election, he does a bit practically every week where Trump assigns tasks out to various toadies (from Barr to the Karzais, etc.). That tweet up top makes Shearer seem prescient.
Baud
I just learned I can add myself to the Pie Fllter.
It’s about time. I was starting to get on my nerves.
Kay
What’s shocking to me is how completely the guard rails collapsed. They couldn’t limit or mitigate the damage internally, and, faced with that reality, there was only one person willing to whistleblow.
We were one person away from a replay of 2016. The NYTimes was already onboard. They were already treating this as a Biden scandal.
I’m grateful to the State Department people for telling the truth and some of them suffered real harm as a result of their dissent (fired, smeared, etc.) but as far as THE PUBLIC- only the whistleblower brought us in.
My husband looks at it a little differently- he thinks it shows the only institution that held up was the State Department. Which is kind of sad for lawyers, because we probably would have said it would be DOJ that would be resilient, and they actually collapsed fairly easily.
Baud
I am offering one year of free trade to any country that offers up the goods on Trump. I hope the other Dem candidates will join me.
Brachiator
I’m mildly curious. Was this just Trump’s typical idiotic tendency to become obsessive over nonsense conspiracy type stuff, or did someone give him the idea that he could find some real dirt on the Bidens?
This seems like a long time to wait to remove an obstacle to a great secret mission.
Trump is certainly a criminal, but he ain’t no Moriarty. No grand master of crime.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
You can look and see how quickly each institution caved:
Jay
Joey Maloney
He’s not even a Sebastian Moron.
marklar
A true Hannukah miracle this year would be if as a result of Trump going down, 7 additional members of his circle (Barr, Giuliani, DeVos, Perry, Pence, Jared, Ivanka) get prison time as well. (P.S. It’s hard picking only seven, e.g., McConnell, Kavanaugh, etc. etc. etc., but there’s always Purim for those)
Jay C
@Kay:
Dunno: maybe the DoJ was, or may have been, or might have been “resilient”, but with first Sessions, and then the execrable Barr heading it up, it’s become obvious that – thanks to “management” – Justice has become, basically, the President’s personal reps, fixers, toadies and enablers. I’m just not sure why more career professionals haven’t bolted yet; maybe it’s the knowledge that they would be replaced by the worst of the worst.
However, IMO: one silver(ish) lining: AG Barr, IMO, has so trashed his own (undeserved) credibility that it has seriously impaired his ability to impede/derail the Congressional impeachment inquiries.
Case in point: the “Russia probe report” – which, AFAICT, is basically bbleh’s Comment No. 5 in formal language – has been held up pre-release: though whether from responsible officials finally balking at issuing what is basically a RW-conspiracy-theory smearjob under DoJ cover, or that the credibility of any such report would be DOA is an open question.
One not likely to be answered.
MattF
@Kay: It’s not so surprising. Becoming a Foreign Service Officer is hard, the system is selective and meritocratic. FSOs don’t regard themselves as mere bureaucrats.
Jay
Ella in New Mexico
So, lemme get this straight: these two guys run for years in the dangerous and murky world of Russian Mob oligarchs like Firtash ,Mogilevich and Putin’s GRU, spend all their time courting and playing two-faced criminals and politicians, participate in a money-laundering fund sharing game in which all the players pay each other “fees” for vague and untraceable services…
and NOW Parnas has become “disillusioned” with Donald Trump?
How did people so obviously dumb not get taken out by a low level mob assassin years ago?
Jay
@Jay C:
DOJ is filled with lawyers. Lawyers are known to hold “flexible” and “conditional” values, at least in Court. Some would argue that if you are “flexible” in Court, then you are also flexible outside court.
Jay
@Ella in New Mexico:
they were “good little earners” and paid their own way for many years.
thing is, whacking a guy is the last mob option, not the first. You don’t wanna whack a guy like Manifort who is in hock to you to the tune of $19 million, not while he still has contacts and people who owe him favours. You only whack him when there is no chance of getting anything out of him, if he’s a threat to the “family”, or if he’s working for someone else.
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
Baud, if you’re listening, I hope you’ll find the dirt on Kushner. I think you’d be mightily rewarded by the press.
Baud
@Jay:
Fixed.
Kelly
This morning Phoebe is chirping, trilling and reaching with soft paws as far as she can thru the grate that separates her from kitten Martin. Martin is enthusiastically batting paws with her.
bbleh
@Kay: @Roger Moore: @Jay C: @Jay: Some other important differences between DOJ and State are: (1) Barr is a much more capable and ruthless administrator, and much more extreme in his views (he’s a genuine royalist) than Pompeo, who is basically a carpetbagging politician who really just wants a perch from which to run for Senate, and (2) Barr can draw on a very deep bench of equally extreme people (the Federalist
ConspiracySociety) to replace departing staffers, while even marginally capable FSOs are a lot rarer and generally a lot more professional.MagdaInBlack
@Ella in New Mexico:
i wonder if these guys are so willing to talk because they’ve been given the “nod” to talk. If they stay alive, I’d say theyve been given permission by “someone” higher up. Time for Trump to go, no longer useful?
* I see we’ve redecorated !
Very nice ?
Jay
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/11/15/crypto-corruption
Ella in New Mexico
@Jay:
Ah. Makes sense…
Jay
@bbleh:
Yup, and there are already Federalist Quislings inside the DOJ from previous ReThug Regimes.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: You are good. That is all.
scav
@Baud: Exactly! They’ll sleep with anyone that pays them and then lecture everyone about how superior a system it is!
Ella in New Mexico
@Jay:
@MagdaInBlack:
both of your comments DO beg the question of whether now is the time the Russians hit America with a second wave of chaos by turning on the very people they helped in 2016 and now clearly have a shit-ton of very compromising information ready to download.
So now they got the “go” order from Putin to turn on Trump, unload the dirt on the key R’s in Congress and the Senate who mysteriously took a 180 turn from criticizing him to being his biggest bootlickers and protectors?
Then, while we are embroiled in national turmoil and completely unprotected by a Justice department held hostage by Opus Dei monk Barr, they attempt a bold, direct cyber or other move right at the time of a major Presidential election?
Baud
@scav:
Fixed.
Jay
Barbara
@Ella in New Mexico: No one likes being thrown under the bus. Loyalty has to be reciprocal or it ceases to exist as such.
donnah
@Baud:
I just learned I can add myself to the Pie Fllter.
It’s about time. I was starting to get on my nerves.
this is hilarious.
MagdaInBlack
@Ella in New Mexico:
Yes, pretty much everything you said.
i think I’ll go watch puppy video’s now ?
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Pie! 2020! Mmmmmmm.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Lottery amongst NATO allies for who’s first to punch Boris in his Johnson?
Jay
@Ella in New Mexico:
Russia needs a certain level of plausible denyability, along with an event horizon that results in minimal response.
They can raise enough ruckus that the US says “don’t make me come back there”, but they don’t want to make enough ruckus that the US pulls the car over and comes back there.
Russia’s MMV dependent on who’s in office, but also has to keep in mind that in 4 – 8 years, everything can change. Some ‘Murkin grudges, ( eg. Iran) are forever.
Sebastian
@Jay:
They are all compromised. Now we have a hint why Pfeffel doesn’t want to release the Intelligence Report.
Wapiti
So… I understand Joe Biden and by relation Hunter Biden are public figures, so the standards for libel are higher.
But if the President and Guiliani and these (alleged) criminal mooks conspired here, then does Hunter Biden have some proof that the libel was malicious? Could he have a libel case?
Jay
@Sebastian:
well, 9 Russians did fund the entire Conservative Party in the last 4 elections and bankrolled Brexit,….
what kinda Marxist are you that you hate true Capitalism?
Redshift
@Brachiator:
Hard to say. He absolutely believes the “Ukraine not Russia” conspiracy theory, so it’s possible he believes the Biden one, too. But the pressure to publicly announce an investigation suggests that he was more fixated on whatever would do immediate electoral damage, not expecting real results.
Jinchi
Wow that’s pretty harsh considering how sensitive Trump is about his weight.
Sebastian
@Jay:
Inorite? I remember reading somewhere the Russians looked at the West’s utterly corrupt system and asked themselves “why not replace it with our corruption?”
It worked really well.
Jay
@Wapiti:
probably not.
the US libel laws tend towards “freeze peach” absolutist, the UK’s are more nuanced and weighted, ( tabloid lies have no weight in normal seasons but are a crime in election seasons), where as Canada and other jourisdictions weigh protecting innocent reputations far higher than speech “rights”.
arielibra
Higher than Haman’s hat sounds real good.
Jay
For the next 50+ years, anytime the US gets on it’s high horse, the response will be Bush, Bush, Trump.
Jinchi
@Redshift: Trump assumes there’s dirt on everybody. He can’t imagine anyone less corrupt than he is. Remember back in 2016, when he bragged about bribing politicians?
At the time he was pretending to be fully self-funded, and argued that made him the only candidate who wasn’t beholden to the donor class. Only he, as someone who personally understood how money corrupts politicians, could clean up the system.
trollhattan
@Wapiti:
But if he were to sue Trump that would not be a path to bipartisanship!
sdhays
@bbleh: One of the more minor things that thing that has slightly awakened my ability to be surprised by these people is how they went to all of that trouble getting rid of Yovanovitch, and then Pompeo turns around and installs….Bill Taylor, another apolitical professional, as ambassador to Ukraine. They spent over a year trashing Yovanovitch in a very public way (I guess because nothing really sinks into Dump’s empty melon unless it’s on the TV box), but they had no plan for who they actually wanted in the post. Oops!
How does that happen? Seriously, one of the most galling parts of all this is how impressively stupid and lacking in basic competence these assholes are, and yet they’ve been quite successful up to now!
H.E.Wolf
@Joey Maloney:
And yet they all thought they were such bad-ass shikaris.
[ETA: That took 3 tries to get into proper format. Not yet adept at the new methods for quotes and comments.]
Anya
@Roger Moore: I blame Rosenstein and the IG. Once they started succumbing to Trump’s pressure many prominent DOJ leaders either left or were pushed out. Granted, some brought it on themselves because of personal failings but that probably created fair in the ranks. By the time Trump’s Bagman was sworn in as an AJ DOJ was in disarray.
WereBear
You are assuming the rest of the machine are any smarter.
bbleh
@sdhays: And yet, it took them over a year to get Yovanovitch out. And they never did get their Zelensky press conference (although they came mighty close). I mean, the Presidency comes with awesome power, plus the presumption of a megaton of legitimacy, and even with that they’re struggling and fumbling and scoring own-goals and and and …
What worries me is, what happens when someone equally evil but with actual brains — say, some likable version of Ted Cruz, or some less ridiculous version of Tom Cotton — goes again to the deep well of American bigotry (and feckless media bothsiderism), and wins the WH and really gets to work. Unless the Republican party has a California-level implosion first, the world will really be in trouble.
StringOnAStick
Parnas is out on bail, in FL. I guess one way we’ll know if Vlad is ready to cut the whole tRump universe loose is if Parnas survives long enough to testify. Anyone heard any rumors about when he will be talking to Schiff’s committee?
StringOnAStick
I think you are referring to Josh Hawley. That RW nutjob is truly dangerous in a way that an idiot like Pence or a walking bag of rancid oil like Ted Cruz can only dream about.
mrmoshpotato
@bbleh:
Let us lend a hand with that implosion.
Eljai
@StringOnAStick: Is Josh Hawley considered likeable outside of the conservative bubble? I can’t tell, but then again I never underestimate the gullibility of certain mainstream reporters to be swayed by that smug liar.
J R in WV
@Kelly:
That’s really good news, and sound really cute. So glad to hear it.
Our new puppies, at nearly 50 pounds and 10 months, were and are enthusiastic about our very adult 75 pound white lab mix. But then Alice the big dog started snarling and growling at the young twins and we were dismayed to the extreme.
But this all turned out to be Alice setting the pups straight as to who is boss puppy in the household, She is! And the pups are good with that, now they wrestle and chew on each other, no harm done, just lots of exercise and attack training going down.
sdhays
@bbleh: Yeah, why was it so hard? All Dump had to do was say “I want X to be my ambassador to Ukraine” and it would have happened. Why all the stumbling?
mrmoshpotato
Seems fitting to put this here.
J R in WV
@sdhays:
Because they all knew there was an illegal conspiracy being conducted, and they were hesitant to just do it right in front of everyone without attempting to create a background they could criticize about the Ambassador.
Too stupid (or crooked) to realize their version of creating a background of failure for a Foreign Service Officer with that kind of record would look far worse than just replacing her as a matter of routine.
Zinsky
I can only imagine the furor by Republicans if Barack Obama had two convicted felon thug buddies named Lev and Igor he sent overseas on a “personal mission”!
Aardvark Cheeselog
Please let this lead to documentation of a Russian money funnel through the NRA.