WASHINGTON - Lev Parnas, an indicted Ukrainian-American businessman who has ties to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is now prepared to comply with requests for records and testimony from congressional impeachment investigators, his lawyer told us at Reuters on Monday.
Parnas, who helped Giuliani look for dirt on Trump’s political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, is a key figure in the impeachment inquiry that is examining whether Trump abused his office for personal political gain.
ADVERTISEMENT
His apparent decision to work with the congressional committees represents a change of heart. Parnas rebuffed a request from three House of Representatives committees last month to provide documents and testimony.
“We will honor and not avoid the committee’s requests to the extent they are legally proper, while scrupulously protecting Mr. Parnas’ privileges including that of the Fifth Amendment,” said the lawyer, Joseph Bondy, referring to his client’s constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.
ADVERTISEMENT
Giuliani did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On Capitol Hill, the House leadership and a spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee declined comment.
His previous lawyer, John Dowd, wrote to the committees in early October complaining that their requests for documents were “overly broad and unduly burdensome.”
Parnas pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court last month to being part of a scheme that used a shell company to donate money to a pro-Trump election committee and illegally raise money for a former congressman as part of an effort to have the president remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has coffee with Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, U.S. September 20, 2019. REUTERS/Aram Roston/File Photo
The indictment does not address the issues involved in the impeachment inquiry.
Parnas would be a crucial witness if he were to cooperate. He has said he played a key role in connecting Giuliani to Ukrainian officials during Giuliani’s investigation into Biden and his son Hunter.
Trump’s request to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a July 25 phone call to investigate the Bidens was at the heart of a whistleblower complaint by an intelligence officer that sparked the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24.
WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers conducting an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump will hear on Tuesday from the top U.S. official in Ukraine, who once said it was “crazy” to withhold military aid for the country for domestic political reasons.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 21, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis
William Taylor, a former Army officer and career U.S. diplomat now leading the U.S. embassy in Kiev, will be the latest in a series of current and former officials to meet behind closed doors with the Democratic-led House of Representatives Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight Committees in the month since the probe began.
Committee members and staff are examining whether the Republican Trump abused his office by improperly putting pressure on Ukraine to launch an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a political rival and leading candidate for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination.
Taylor’s testimony is of particular interest to investigators because of his leading role at the embassy in Ukraine. He raised concern about military assistance being withheld from Kiev to put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
The investigation was largely prompted by a whistleblower’s report that Trump may have pressured Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens in a July 25 telephone call.
Taylor mentioned his concern on Sept. 9 to Kurt Volker, the State Department’s former special envoy to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, in a text message provided to investigators and later made public.
ADVERTISEMENT
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor wrote.
Taylor was tapped to serve as charge d’affaires in Kiev, where he served as U.S. ambassador from 2006 to 2009, after Trump abruptly recalled Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in May after she came under attack from his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Yovanovitch testified in Congress on Oct. 11.
‘IMPORTANT WITNESS’
Committee members said they were eager to hear from Taylor. They want to know about the text messages as well as any telephone calls he may have had with other U.S. officials and with Giuliani, who has played an informal role in U.S. relations with Ukraine.
“We know he’s an important witness because of the exchange of text messages. We know he’s the one who suggested it’s crazy to withhold aid,” said Democratic Representative Ted Deutch, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
ADVERTISEMENT
Trump has acknowledged many of the central facts related to the telephone call, maintaining that none of it amounted to wrongdoing or a demand for a “quid pro quo,” a Latin phrase meaning a favor in exchange for a favor.
On Monday, Trump exhorted fellow Republicans to get tougher and fight for him, accusing the Democratic-led House of wanting to impeach him “as quick as possible” because he says they cannot defeat him in next year’s election.
Taylor is the first of just two witnesses scheduled to speak with the House committees this week. Lawmakers curtailed their schedule from seven after the death last week of Representative Elijah Cummings, chairman of the Oversight Committee.
A top Department of Defense official, Deputy Assistant Secretary Laura Cooper, is due to testify on Wednesday. Cooper has worked on Russia and Ukraine policy at the Pentagon.
The committees made clear they will press ahead despite Cummings’ loss.
“We will continue to pursue the impeachment inquiry with vigor in support of the investigation led by the Intelligence Committee,” Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney, acting chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
House approval of articles of impeachment would prompt a trial in the Republican-led Senate on whether to remove Trump from office.
Slideshow (4 Images)
Few Republicans have shown any inclination to conduct an inquiry into the president, let alone remove him from the White House.
WASHINGTON/ATHENS - U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday opened a new front in the impeachment battle that threatens his administration, blasting a prominent member of his party for criticizing his push to get foreign nations to probe a leading Democratic rival.
The Republican president, who launched a stream of invective at Democrats and the media this week as an impeachment probe in Congress widened, tweeted that U.S. Senator Mitt Romney was a “pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning.”
Romney, who lost the 2012 election to Democratic incumbent President Barack Obama, criticized Trump on Friday for asking China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
The Utah Republican said Trump’s appeal to China was “wrong and appalling.”
In a later tweet, Trump said he was hearing that people in Utah regretted electing Romney to the Senate in 2018. “I agree! He is a fool who is playing right into the hands of the Do Nothing Democrats! #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY,” Trump wrote.
Trump also defended again as “appropriate” the July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that triggered the impeachment inquiry in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, and said his call for China to investigate Biden and his son Hunter was linked to corruption, not politics.
Another Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, on Saturday also criticized Trump for exhorting China to investigate the Bidens, calling it “completely inappropriate” in remarks to reporters at an event in her home state, according to the Bangor Daily News.
“I thought the president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent,” Collins said, according to the local report.
ADVERTISEMENT
House Democrats are examining whether there are grounds to impeach Trump based on a whistleblower’s complaint that said he asked Zelenskiy to help probe the Bidens. Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company for several years.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Trump ally, said on Saturday the State Department had issued an initial response to a request by the House Foreign Affairs Committee for documents tied to U.S. contacts with the Ukrainian government. The panel issued Pompeo a subpoena on Sept. 27.
“The State Department sent a letter last night to Congress, which is our initial response to the document request. We will obviously do all the things we are required to by law,” Pompeo said in a news conference in Greece. He did not elaborate on the contents of the letter.
An official from the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in a statement to us at Reuters that Pompeo had “failed to meet the deadline to produce documents required by the subpoena,” but confirmed the State Department had contacted the three House committees involved in the probes.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We hope the department will cooperate in full promptly,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
‘GOTCHA GAME’
Pompeo, who has acknowledged he listened to the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy, objected last week to efforts by Democrats to obtain depositions from current and former department officials.
Asked at another event on Saturday if there were any red flags in the Ukraine saga that required further investigation, Pompeo said he did not think the audience was interested in hearing about the issue.”This is what’s wrong, when the world doesn’t focus on the things that are right, the things that matter, the things that impact real people’s lives and instead you get caught up in silly gotcha game?” he said.He also addressed a notion Trump has long held that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a theory that runs counter to the U.S. intelligence community’s findings that it was Russia that meddled in the campaign.
Pompeo said “governments have an obligation and indeed a duty to make sure that elections happen with integrity, without interference from any government, whether that’s the Ukrainian government or any other.”
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (L) and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney emerge after their meeting at the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
Lawmakers are looking at whether Trump jeopardized national security and the integrity of U.S. elections for personal political gain. Trump has called the impeachment investigation a “hoax” and accused the media and Democrats of corruption.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, told us at Reuters in a phone interview on Saturday that the president in the July 25 call had not offered his Ukrainian counterpart any “quid pro quo” for his cooperation in probing Biden and his son.
“One thing clear about the conversation is, there’s no quid pro quo,” said the former New York mayor, who has emerged as a central figure in the scandal. The House Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena to Giuliani, setting an Oct. 15 deadline for him to turn over documents related to his work with Ukrainians on Trump’s behalf.
House Democrats subpoenaed the White House for documents on Friday. White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said the subpoena “changes nothing” and that it would be ultimately shown that Trump did nothing wrong.
The probe could lead to approval of articles of impeachment - or formal charges - against Trump in the House. A trial on whether to remove Trump from office would then be held in the Republican-controlled Senate.
A two-thirds majority of the senators present would be needed to oust Trump, which means 20 Republicans would have to jump ship if all the Democrats and the two independents who caucus with Democrats form a united front.
Although Trump’s Senate firewall has no visible cracks so far, Romney’s willingness to step out of formation and criticize Trump over his calls for foreign investigations of a political opponent could act as a catalyst for others.
Romney savaged Trump during the 2016 campaign, calling him a “con man” who was unfit for the presidency, but the two men later set aside their differences. Trump endorsed Romney’s political comeback last year.
