Giuliani Associate Lev Parnas: Trump “Knew Everything”!

Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump‘s personal lawyer, stated in an interview on Wednesday night that Trump had been aware of the entire conspiracy surrounding the Ukraine scandal, despite the president’s repeated denials.

Parnas, an Ukraine-born U.S. citizen, is a central figure in the Trump-Zelensky scandal.

Parnas stated that Trump “knew everything” about the effort to pressure Ukraine, by withholding $391 million in military assistance, to pressure the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating the 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. He also expressed deep remorse for having trusted the pair.

“He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president. I have no intent, I have no reason to speak to any of these officials,” Parnas said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

Lawyers for Parnas stated that he would cooperate with federal prosecutors to investigate both Trump and Giuliani.

Indicted for campaign finance violations, Parnas received a $1 million payment from a lawyer for Ukrainian businessman, Dmytro Firtash. U.S. prosecutors claim that Parnas concealed the contribution from them and the asked that his bail revoked.

Parnas asserted that Trump and Giuliani hand-picked him to do their Ukrainian dirty work, and that is the secret that the pair are attempting to conceal.

SLIDESHOW: TOP DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020

“Why would President Zelensky’s inner circle, or Minister Avakov, or all these people, or President Poroshenko, meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me,” he said.

The statement, which represents the most direct implication of Trump in wrong-doing so far, follows the official Democratic House’s formal impeachment of Trump. After the transmission of the two articles Wednesday to the Senate, the Senate trial kicked off on Thursday, as dictated by statute in the Constitution.

Trump has denied any illegal actions and has tried to distance himself from Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman after Parnas was indicted for the obscure leveraging of foreign currencies into U.S. elections.

“I don’t know them,” Trump told reporters after the pair was arrested in October. “I don’t know about them. I don’t know what they do, but I don’t know, maybe they were clients of Rudy. You’d have to ask Rudy, I just don’t know.”

Yet on several occasions, Trump and Parnas have posed in photos together.

The photo indicates that Parnas had at least one encounter with the president’s daughter and her husband, who double as White House advisers. The release of the picture follows Parnas’s impending Congressional testimony about his involvement in the Ukraine scandal.

The above photo, published on Facebook, also depicts a Trump and Parnas relationship. Posted online in March of 2014, it was the first photo published, two years before to what was known to be their first interaction in 2012.

Article by Emily Bevacqua