The White House dismissed claims by an associate of Rudy Giuliani that President Trump knew of efforts to find damaging information about Joe Biden in Ukraine.
House prosecutors are considering whether to call the associate, Lev Parnas, as a witness in the impeachment trial.
Kellyanne Conway told reporters to be wary of believing someone accused of breaking campaign finance law. She compared Parnas with other figures who fell from grace after giving anti-Trump interviews, such as Stormy Daniels’s former lawyer Michael Avenatti.
“He’s the star of the show now that Michael Cohen is in jail [and] Avenatti is going to jail,” she said.
Parnas, 47, a Ukraine-born American citizen, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night, “President Trump knew exactly what was going on.”
[Related: Kevin McCarthy rejects new Parnas evidence: ‘Lacks all credibility’]
Parnas said he told a senior aide to the then-president-elect of Ukraine that Washington would freeze aid if Kyiv did not announce investigations that would help President Trump politically.
His account followed a release by House Democrats a letter by Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, stating that he was requesting with Trump’s “knowledge and consent” a private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who would later take a central role in the phone call that sparked a whistleblower complaint.
Parnas’s account, coming on the eve of the Senate launching its impeachment trial, was immediately seized on by Trump critics as evidence that Giuliani was doing the president’s bidding.
Conway said it was irresponsible to give credence to hearsay evidence from someone facing charges. “Nobody on TV like that is under oath. He obviously is desperate to get attention, which you will all shower him with promptly, I’m sure,” she said. “He is someone who was arrested and indicted on some serious criminal campaign finance charges.
“In a court of law, you’d never be able to say what someone else knew,” Conway said.
Parnas and Igor Fruman, a second Giuliani associate, have been charged with making $325,000 in illegal donations to a Trump-aligned super PAC.
Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff, who heads the House team that will act as impeachment prosecutors, said they were considering calling Parnas as a witness if permitted. “We are continuing to review his interviews and the materials he has provided to evaluate his potential testimony in the Senate trial,” he said.
