An indicted associate of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani denied that another Giuliani associate, Robert F. Hyde, stalked the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, claiming in a televised interview that messages from Hyde he provided to House investigators were the digressions of a “drunk” Trumpworld hanger-on looking to curry favor.
Soviet-born businessman Lev Parnas, whose messages with Hyde, a Trump donor, were released this week by House Intelligence Committee investigators, “never” worried that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was in personal danger. And he “absolutely” did not believe that Hyde had the ambassador under surveillance, Parnas said.
“Never from my side or from anybody I know,” he said of the threat of danger to Yovanovitch. “I definitely did not believe Mr. Hyde.”
Hyde wrote Parnas regularly with news on the ambassador’s movements, updates that took a darker turn when Hyde relayed a message from a contact on the ground. “They asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them,” he wrote.
“She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Her computer is off,” he wrote. Hyde then shared Yovanovitch’s location outside the embassy and noted her private security. “They will let me know when she is on the move,” he said, referring to his contact in Ukraine.
Less than a minute later, Parnas, who in the interview denied involvement, responded: “Perfect.”
On Wednesday, Parnas sought a decisive break between himself and Hyde. “I think he was either drunk or was trying to make himself bigger than he was,” Parnas said. “I didn’t take him seriously. I didn’t even respond to him most of the time. If I did, it was something like ‘LOL’ or ‘OK’ or ‘great’ or something like that.”
Parnas contacted a mutual acquaintance at Trump-aligned super PAC America First, he said, who advised him to keep his distance from Hyde.
“I think he got into something with Greg Pence, Mike Pence’s brother, thinking that the Secret Service was after him and somebody wants to kill him,” Parnas said. “Once he started texting me that, that was the end of our relationship.”
Parnas, who was charged with violating a ban on foreign donations and political contributions, has turned state’s witness in the investigation of an alleged pressure campaign on Ukraine that he says went to the top of the administration and is at the center of Trump’s impeachment trial.
“I’m going to use a famous quote by Sondland,” Parnas said, referring to U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. “‘Everybody was in the loop.'”
In a reprise of the House Intelligence Committee hearings, where the No. 4 U.S. diplomat in Ukraine testified that Trump’s voice had been loud enough to recognize from Sondland’s cellphone across a table, Parnas said he heard Trump on the phone with Giuliani “several times,” which he knew because the president spoke “very loudly.”
Parnas described putting Giuliani on speakerphone with Ukrainian officials to attest to Parnas’s role as a representative of Trump.
Hyde, a Republican lobbyist running for Congress, is pictured at the White House and in photographs with Trump, his children, and GOP lawmakers. In an interview Wednesday, he rejected suggestions of a plot to oust Yovanovitch. “It was just colorful. … I thought we were playing.”
He denied that he had “eyes” on Yovanovitch. “Absolutely not, are you kidding me?” Hyde said. “I’m a little landscaper from f—ing Connecticut.”
“I’d like to see the full text come out because there was some real colorful stuff said by Parnas,” Hyde said about his extended back-and-forth with Parnas. “I would love to see Adam Schiff’s texts.”
Hyde did not respond to request for comment.
[Opinion: Lev Parnas isn’t a ‘bombshell’ in the impeachment case. He’s stalling on his way to prison]
