(CNN) – Lev Parnas, the businessman of Soviet origin whose work in Ukraine with the personal lawyer of President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, is at the center of the investigation of political judgmentHe said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday that the president’s efforts in Ukraine were “about (the elections of) 2020” and not about the interest of U.S.
“That’s how everyone saw them,” Parnas told Anderson Cooper of CNN, questioning Trump’s claim that the urge to dig up damaging information about his rival political, Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden, emerged from concerns about corruption in Ukraine.
Lev Parnas arrives in federal court at a hearing on illegal campaign finance charges in New York on October 23, 2019. (Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
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“That was the most important thing,” Parnas said, “so that he stayed for four years and continued the fight. I mean, there was no other reason to do it. ”
Since the indictment against Parnas, in October, by federal prosecutors in New York on campaign finance charges along with another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, Parnas has broken publicly with Trump and Giuliani, and has distanced himself by constantly releasing damaging information for the president. That was a sharp turn of Trump’s devotion to Parnas.
“I loved him,” Parnas said.
“I mean, when the FBI came in a raid on my house, my wife felt embarrassed because they said she had a sanctuary from him. I had pictures everywhere. I idolized him. I thought he was the savior, ”he recalled. Then he added that his 5-year-old son voted for Trump at school.
Parnas has been urging Congress to allow him to testify as part of the political trial investigation, and on Wednesday he said it would be wise for the Senate to call him as a witness. He added that he and the former National Security advisor, John Bolton, “could fit all points, I think, because I was on the ground there, and he was here.”
When Trump denied any association with Parnas after the accusation, Parnas responded.
“The truth is out now, thank God,” he said. “I thought they were going to shut me up and make me look like the scapegoat and try to blame me for things I haven’t done,” he said.
Trump said: “He is lying.”
Parnas described two occasions when he sent messages to Ukrainians that amounted to quid pro quos, demanding the announcement of an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, in exchange for the benefits of the White House.
The first, he recalled, was during a meeting in early 2019 with the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, in which Poroshenko was told that if he announced an investigation into the Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma – where Hunter Biden was Board member— “Trump would invite him to the White House or make a statement for him, but he would basically start supporting him for president.”
The second occurred after Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, won the elections. The White House knew that the Trump administration’s assistance in Zelensky’s inauguration would be valuable, and in a meeting with a Zelensky adviser, Parnas conveyed a message.
“I told them, strictly and severely, several things: A. That he needed Zelensky to make an announcement literally that night or within the next 24 hours that they were going to open an investigation into Biden,” Parnas recalled. He also told the assistant that Ukrainians needed to “get rid of certain people who are enemies of the president in his administration.”
When asked if the conversation was about military aid that the United States should provide to Ukraine, Parnas said: “Yes, if they didn’t make the announcement, basically, there would be no relationship.”
He continued, referring to the possibility of Vice President Mike Pence attending Zelensky’s inauguration: “It was not a specific army, there was no help to be assisted. There would be no takeover, Pence would not be in the investiture. And there would be no visit to the White House. Basically they would not have communication. ”
When asked if Pence knew what Giuliani and his associates were doing, Parnas said he wasn’t sure if the vice president knew “everything we were doing.” Questioned about whether Pence was aware of a quid pro quoParnas replied: “Everyone who was close to Trump knew that this was annoyance and that it was a serious situation.”
As several witnesses who testified in the political trial investigation in the House of Representatives, the objective of Trump and Giuliani’s effort with respect to a Biden investigation was simply to promote the announcement of an investigation, not necessarily to achieve an investigation in itself. Parnas confirmed that this was the case and said: “That’s because nobody trusted them even to do an investigation.”
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