California Rep. Devin Nunes said he now remembers a phone call he received from Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
During a Fox News appearance Wednesday evening, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee belittled that conversation when asked to respond to a clip of Parnas saying during an MSNBC interview that his dealings in Ukraine, now the subject of impeachment scrutiny, were done with Trump’s knowledge.
Call records were released as part of a congressional report released in December showing Nunes had been in contact with Giuliani and Parnas. At the time, Nunes said he did not “recall” Parnas’s name and that he’d have to go back and check his phone records.
On Wednesday, Nunes said, after going through his records, he was able to remember where he was when he received the call from Parnas on his cellphone.
“I remember that call, which was very odd, random, talking about random things,” Nunes said, adding that he simply told Parnas to talk to his staff.
Parnas, 47, along with another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, was charged over an alleged scheme to funnel foreign money to Republican politicians. House Democrats began releasing a trove of texts and documents Tuesday evening that related to efforts to remove then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Kyiv.
Nunes said the first time he remembered hearing Yovanovitch’s name was when the “impeachment sham” started. He also broached Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph Bondy, who claimed his client was willing to tell Congress that the congressman met with a top Ukrainian prosecutor in Vienna in 2018, seeking political dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.
Accusing Parnas of having “a problem with the truth,” Nunes said Democrats are playing a “cat-and-mouse” game with Parnas in which the Ukrainian American businessman could be vying for an “immunity deal.”
The new Parnas documents were made public shortly before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned to give the Ukraine-related articles of impeachment alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress to the Republican-led Senate.
