TRUMP SHOULD TAKE HEED: ANOTHER PRESIDENT HAS LOST DUE TO TAPE RECORDINGS

…This is one way the Southern District of New York sees Donald Trump

Lev Parnas Attorney says multiple tapes were turned over to the House investigators.

You are now probably aware that Soviet born Mr. Lev Parnas, is under a federal indictment for planning to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars of foreign money for Donald Trump’s re-election. He and his associate, Yuri Lutsenko, had already illegally donated thousands of dollars to America First, a pro-Trump Political Action Committee (PAC).  Parnas had eventually become tightly integrated into Trump’s circle.  Trump now insists that Parnas, an eventual business associate of Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, was only given access to the president because he’d contributed large donations to Trump’s campaign.  The word on the street says that the Parnas money most likely came from a Russian oligarch.

Trump says he doesn’t even know Parnas, even though Parnas, as Trump’s argument goes, was simply one of hundreds of such people who take photos with the president. But to hear Parnas’ story, though his work for Giuliani in late 2018 and in 2019, he was well-known by Trump.  Parnas was integral to Trump’s effort to get Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, the potential opponent of Trump’s in the upcoming 2020 election.

Parnas’s attorney told The Post that Parnas had turned over a number of recordings to House investigators.  The one that was recently released to the media was really, an audio/video snippet of a fund-raising dinner meeting.  This was, after all, a fundraising dinner of the type to which Trump has often referred. It was one of several instances in which Parnas’s proximity to the president was side-by-side with Parnas for a number of fund raising events.

Parnas was not yet working for Giuliani during that first former dinner event; Giuliani had himself only begun working for Trump two weeks prior.  A few weeks after the dinner, though, Parnas and his colleague met with then US Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), at which point the two advocated for the ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s ouster as the US Ambassador to Ukraine.  In fact, there is a tape from Parnas of the president saying at a dinner meeting about the Ambassador for them to “take he out” and get rid of her.  The ambassador was known to be a serious anti-corruption driver in the Ukraine and was getting in Giuliani's way.  This is according to the indictment of Parnas, who had also agreed to raise money for Sessions. The day Parnas met Sessions, Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for Yovanovitch to be removed.

It is appearing that the authorities such as the Federal Government’s Southern District of New York (SDNY), they are dealing with the president as they have dealt with other mob bosses.  First they go after the “Mob’s” underlings, and they start compiling the incriminating information from them as they work their way up the mob to the main man.  They have started with Parnas and Lutsenko, so who’s next...?

Trump says he doesn’t even know Parnas, but Parnas continues to show that he has kept serious evidence to show otherwise.  But at one point, Parnas told Trump that the then-ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, had disparaged the president, prompting Trump to say that she should be removed from her position.  It’s a response that seems to conflict with the idea that Trump was simply interacting with Parnas as a random donor.  This  bolsters Parnas’s insinuations that his relationship with Trump was more than substantial.

Is the president lying about his relationship with Parnas or is it based on unfounded assertions from strangers?  I doubt that..

But it’s easy to say that either might be the case. Trump’s style of seeking out the opinions of random nearby individuals is well-documented. This is a president who even held a discussion with the foreign leader of China about an international crisis in the middle of the dining room at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort. This is also a president who has made more than 16,000 false or misleading statements during his three years in office.

Frankly, it’s easy to see a way in which both could be true: Parnas was at first, just a donor, but he eventually made his way into Trump’s inner club, and one wonders if Trump can really dismiss Parnas that completely.

We do know what happened when the military aid to Ukraine was announced back in June 2019.  When Trump saw news coverage of a Defense Department announcement that it would provide $250 million in aid to that country, Trump immediately intervened with questions. A few weeks later, Trump placed that aid on hold.  That is the act that is at the center of the current impeachment inquiry.

Team Trump’s has argued that the hold was an outgrowth of his skepticism about foreign corruption while claiming his support for Ukraine was steadfast.  In that meeting of April 2018, in conversation with Parnas, a donor he had met a few times before, Trump is unclear on the timing of this major component of his administration’s policy about Ukraine.

No question though, what is more significant than this for the Republican senators is: “What are in those other tapes from Parnas that were given to the investigators?”

The release of the first, single recording spawned many new questions related to Ukraine and the actors involved in Trump’s efforts there.  Remember.... the Parnas attorney has told The Washington Post that Parnas had turned other recordings over to the House investigators.

Thinking back to President Richard M. Nixon......tape recordings have submarined a president once before.

Copyright G. Ater 2020