Ukrainian fixer Lev Parnas is requesting that Attorney General William Barr recuse himself from investigating his alleged crimes.
Parnas, an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, is charged with violating campaign finance laws by allegedly shuttling money from foreign donors into U.S. election campaigns. His attorney Joseph Bondy sent a letter to Barr in a New York federal court on Monday asking for his recusal.
In the letter, Bondy accused Barr of having “conflicts of interest” because of the attorney general’s connections to Trump’s Ukraine policy, including being named in the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that sparked the president’s impeachment.
The attorney also said that Barr’s relationship with Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, and Giuliani compromised the attorney general’s neutrality. DiGenova and Toensing, a husband-wife team of conservative lawyers, worked with Giuliani to arrange for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
“In addition to harmful perceptions, this conflict of interest appears to have caused actual harm to Mr. Parnas, who, given delays in the production of discovery in his federal case, was rendered unable to comply with a duly issued congressional subpoena in time for congressional investigators to make complete use of his materials or properly assess Mr. Parnas as a potential witness,” the letter said.
Bondy demanded that in place of Barr, the Justice Department appoint a special counsel to handle Parnas’s case.
Parnas, 47, has been floated to testify in the Senate trial over Trump’s impeachment. He sat for an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last week and claimed that a former Trump lawyer asked him to “sacrifice” himself for the president. Parnas has also turned over pages of messages to House impeachment investigators.
