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Lev Parnas Implicates Giuliani, Pence, Barr, Nunes, and Trump in Ukraine Scandal

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One of the central figures that has emerged in the Ukraine scandal that led to the president’s impeachment is Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. Parnas was indicted on federal charges several weeks ago and has since indicated that he is willing to cooperate with Congress’s investigation into allegations that Trump improperly pressured the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation of his political opponent, Joe Biden. On the eve of the House’s transmission of articles of impeachment to the Senate, Parnas sat down with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to discuss documentary evidence that he had produced, including handwritten notes describing the scheme to coerce President Zelensky into announcing an investigation into the Bidens. 

Parnas’s interview signalled a break from the Trump administration, as he directly blamed several key White House figures, including the attorney general and the vice president, for their culpability in the scheme. While Parnas’s claims have not yet been fully vetted, they corroborate much of the testimony provided by other witnesses who participated in the House’s investigation. Most prominently, Parnas reiterated Gordon Sondland’s claim that “everyone was in the loop;” in other words, according to witnesses, all of the senior Trump administration officials were aware of the scheme as it was being carried out. 

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In addition to providing circumstantial evidence corroborating the narrative that has emerged about the president’s involvement in the extortion plot, Parnas also provided previously-undisclosed evidence, further illuminating the roles of individuals connected with the two governments in attempting to carry out the plan. Parnas, by his own account, personally worked with Rudy Giuliani and others to oust former US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was perceived as interfering in the administration’s scheme. 

Parnas also communicated with a new character in the Ukraine story, Robert Hyde, a controversial Republican congressional candidate who was not publicly known to be connected with the scandal before Parnas’s release of text messages and other documents. Hyde, by Parnas’s account, was “always drunk,” and as such Parnas often did not take his text messages seriously. Nevertheless, Hyde’s recently-revealed correspondence with Parnas drew significant media attention as his texts appeared to include personal threats against the ambassador, who seemed to be under surveillance by suspicious figures. Accordingly, and in an ironic twist, Ukraine has opened an investigation into the alleged surveillance of and threats against the American ambassador, potentially paving the way for the release of further evidence about the scandal down the road.

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According to Parnas, essentially all of the highest-ranking members of the Trump administration as well as other government officials were aware of and at least complicit in the scheme, specifically including the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Vice President Pence, U.S. Representative Devin Nunes, and Attorney General William Barr. According to Parnas, Pence’s trip to Ukraine was canceled as a direct result of Zelensky’s delay in announcing an investigation into the Bidens, Nunes personally knew Parnas despite his claims that they didn’t know each other and was involved in efforts to produce documents denigrating Biden, and Barr must have known about everything that was happening but chose not to do anything about it, despite his position as the head of the Department of Justice. By Parnas’s account, Guiliani definitely had a direct role in carrying out the scheme whereas the other government officials participated in a supporting capacity. 

While Parnas’s claims are explosive, it’s important to keep in mind that not all of them have been fully vetted, and although Parnas produced documents that support some of his claims, some of what he said may be untrue. Though he pled “not guilty” to largely-unrelated federal charges issued last year, Parnas may be lying in order to diminish the appearance of his own culpability in committing illegal acts, or he may be lying for reasons unknown to the general public. While Parnas’s character and his testimony can reasonably be called into question, the voluminous documentation he made publicly available reveals a near-incontrovertible paper trail that strongly supports the general narrative of the administration’s involvement in a corrupt extortion scheme carried out to compromise an American election.

Impeachment Trial

Impeachment Trial Plans Begin as Schumer Requests Witnesses

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The president will be impeached this week, as the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve  two articles of impeachment for a full vote on the House floor. Because Democrats hold the majority in the House right now and this impeachment is a hyper-partisan affair, it is virtually certain that the House of Representatives will vote to send both articles to the Senate, where a trial of some sort will be held. The Senate is currently controlled by Republicans, who have 53 seats whereas the Democrats have 45. As a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate is required to remove a president from office via impeachment, this outcome is unlikely, particularly because not a single Republican senator has indicated that they’d entertain voting with the Democrats. That being said, the upcoming Senate trial is nonetheless sure to have a significant and difficult-to-predict impact on the political world, particularly in consideration of the fact that the next presidential election is less than a year away.

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Now that impeachment in the House is all but certain, Senate lawmakers have begun publicly discussing the outline and the structure of the trial. Unsurprisingly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has all but confirmed that the outcome of the trial is a foregone conclusion, saying, “there will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this to the extent that we can.” Mitch McConnell wants the trial to move quickly and with little fanfare, even suggesting that witnesses may not be called at all, in the hopes that news about the facts pertaining to the trial will fly under the radar to the greatest extent possible, whereas the president wants the trial to be a bombastic, theatrical affair, believing that such an event would bolster his poll numbers. 

Despite this difference in opinion, though, Democrats were infuriated by McConnell’s suggestion that the trial should be orchestrated in coordination with the defendant in the trial, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling it “totally out of line.” During impeachment, senators are assigned the role of juror, and as such are required to swear an oath which reads: “I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.” The Republicans’ coordination with the White House, then, would seem to be a clear and direct violation of this oath, as jurors who have already made up their minds before the trial takes place plainly impede justice.

The decisions senators will make throughout the process are hard to predict and will shed light on these their characters and indeed on the health of the republic generally.

Nevertheless, Democrats are doing everything in their power to negotiate with the Senate majority to make the trial process as fair as they can. Accordingly, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer today wrote a letter to McConnell outlining the witnesses he wishes to call during the trial, which will likely not be held until next year. Given the president’s love of drama and theatrics, it is likely that some witnesses will be called for the trial, though it’s unclear exactly who would be compelled to testify: Schumer specifically requested the appearance of Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former Security Advisor John Bolton, both of whom refused to cooperate with congressionally approved subpoenas during the inquiry at the direction of the White House and may simply continue to ignore further calls to testify; and Republicans likely will seek testimonies of the unnamed whistleblower and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the former of whom is protected by anonymity statutes and the latter of whom is not a fact or expert witness in this case and thus would have little legal justification for being compelled to act as a witness. 

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Though Schumer knows that he likely cannot change McConnell’s mind, or the minds of Trump’s most ardent defenders in the Senate, he believes he may convince enough Republican senators that at the very least relevant witnesses should be called to testify to secure the 51 votes necessary to pass an agreed-upon set of rules designed to enable a fair trial. When it comes to impeachment trials, there exists very little historical precedent for how they should be arranged and conducted, and impeachment has never before occurred in a political environment as hyper-partisan and polarized as today’s; as such, the decisions senators will make throughout the process are hard to predict and will shed light on these their characters and indeed on the health of the republic generally.

Impeachment 2

Legal Scholars Testify Trump Committed Impeachable Offenses

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Today, the first public hearing conducted by the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives began, as four legal scholars provided testimony to help lawmakers determine whether to issue articles of impeachment against President Trump. Three of the witnesses were requested by Democrats, and one was requested by Republicans; predictably, the three legal scholars called by Democrats testified that they believe that Trump should be impeached, whereas the fourth witness warned that the process of impeachment could establish a dangerous precedent. All four witnesses are highly decorated constitutional scholars, and are employed by universities like Harvard and Stanford. For Democrats, the purpose of this hearing is to educate both Congress and the American public about the constitutional process of impeachment and what actions necessitate it. Republicans used their speaking time during the hearing to complain about the process of impeachment, arguing that there do not exist any facts on the matter and frequently used parliamentary inquiries to disrupt the process, including a request for a vote on whether to subpoena the whistleblower.

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To make their point about why they believe Trump should be impeached, the witnesses employed analogies describing how similar behaviors by others would clearly be seen as wrong. For example, professor Pamela Karlan described the hypothetical example of a police officer who pulls over a speeding driver and offers not to write him a ticket in exchange for twenty dollars. In this hypothetical, the driver does not have twenty dollars in his wallet, but the police officer lets the driver off with a warning. Clearly, the police officer in this example is still guilty of the crime of bribery, even though his attempt was ultimately unsuccessful. Professor Karlan compares this example to the real-life actions taken by Trump, who similarly bribed the President of Ukraine with the promise of military aid in exchange for assistance in his re-election campaign in the form of opening an investigation into his political rival.

Ominously, the witnesses warned that if Trump is not impeached for this offense, then a precedent will be established that no president can ever be impeached for anything

Another impeachable offense discussed by the witnesses was obstruction of justice. The witnesses testified that Trump has engaged in a pattern of obstruction of justice, not only during the Ukraine investigation by ordering staff not to comply with congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony, but also during the Mueller investigation, as described in detail in the second half of the infamous Mueller report. Precedent has established that obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense, as the offense factored heavily in the impeachments of both Nixon and Clinton. Obstruction of justice has been considered impeachable because it harms Congress’ ability to carry out its constitutional duty of oversight over the other two branches of government.

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Throughout the witnesses’ testimonies, a common recurring theme was the intent of the Framers when they decided to include the mechanism of impeachment in the Constitution. The Framers specifically feared that a president would be naturally inclined to abuse the power of his office in order to undermine the election process. In fact, this very fear is what motivated some of the Framers who originally opposed including impeachment in the Constitution to change their mind. Under English law at the time, the only member of the government who could never be impeached was the King, and the Framers wanted to ensure that the United States would not become a monarchy or a dictatorship due to a president’s abuse of power. As such, the witnesses argued that impeachment exists for the very reason it is currently being used, which is to prevent a president from abusing his office in order to transform the government from a democracy to an authoritarian system. Ominously, the witnesses warned that if Trump is not impeached for this offense, then a precedent will be established that no president can ever be impeached for anything, as the actions taken by the president for which he is currently being impeached are precisely the ones for which the process of impeaching an American president was originally created.