Lev Parnas, an associate of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is apparently taking the Michael Cohen route on his way to prison.
The latest “bombshell” in our national nightmare, wherein we actually have to pay attention to Ukraine, is that Parnas wants to testify in the Senate impeachment trial that Trump was knowingly attempting a quid pro quo scheme. As part of that, Parnas has supplied House Democrats with a bunch of new texts that purport to show him stalking Marie Yovanovitch for unknown purposes when she was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Mind you, Parnas is currently trying to stay out of jail (and perhaps to flee the country, according to prosecutors) while awaiting trial for big charges on campaign finance violations. Prosecutors accuse him of a conspiracy that involved using money from Ukraine to influence U.S. elections, candidates for office, and elected officials.
Parnas is doing exactly what Trump’s former personal lawyer Cohen did when he was also trying to avoid prison. Cohen repeatedly embarrassed himself last year by going on TV, accusing Trump of all the same things liberals accuse Trump of, and then going in front of Congress to apologize for ever having been associated with the president.
He still went to prison, despite his admirable attempt at ingratiating himself to Trump’s critics. The same will happen with Parnas.
Parnas has said in television interviews this week that he was working on behalf of Giuliani and Trump to shake down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by threatening a soured relationship with the United States unless Zelensky publicly committed to investigating former Vice President Joe Biden. He said that Trump knew about everything and that the president really was pursuing a quid pro quo — Trump wanted the investigation in exchange for continued aid and support for Ukraine.
This is everything Democrats want to hear in support of their ridiculous impeachment case.
The problem Democrats run into, however, is two-fold. First, the only conversation about Ukraine that really matters is the one we’ve seen the transcript for on the summer 2019 call between Trump and Zelensky. So we know what Trump wanted, though there’s no evidence in that transcript to indicate a quid pro quo. Second, the foreign aid allotted for Ukraine that was delayed, apparently at the behest of Trump, did arrive at its final destination.
Democrats say that the only reason the aid got to Ukraine is that Trump was caught in his scheme. But that doesn’t really make sense when you consider that the aid had an expiration date on it and that without a really, really good justification to Congress, Trump would have violated the law by not spending it by then.
What was Trump planning to say if the aid expired before it could be sent? That he just didn’t feel like sending it? That he needed a commitment to the Biden investigation? We’ll never know the answer because we never got there.
Parnas isn’t a bombshell in the impeachment case. He’s another Michael Cohen heading to prison.
