What’s clear is that, for Parnas and Fruman, the stakes were more than just political. “Trump has either authorized Giuliani to engage in private diplomacy and deal-making or, even worse, remains silent while Giuliani and his dodgy band of soldiers of fortune engage in activities that severely undermine US credibility and are contrary to fundamental US interests,” he said. Giuliani has previously said that the two men were his clients and that neither he nor they did anything improper in pushing prosecutors to pursue investigations into Trump’s rivals.īut Kenneth McCallion, a former federal prosecutor who once represented Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, said Parnas and Fruman were “playing with fire” by carrying out their campaign in the US and Ukraine without registering as foreign agents or being vetted by the State Department.
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“We’re American citizens, we love our country, we love our president.”įruman did not respond to detailed questions sent by BuzzFeed News nor did Giuliani or the White House. That was what kick-started the campaign to dig up information on Democrats in Kiev - an effort that “is not going away,” Parnas added. “They knew I was friends with the mayor,” he said, referring to Giuliani, who was previously mayor of New York City. He said the back channel was initiated by Ukrainian officials who wanted to meet US authorities and had trouble making the right connections. “Information was coming to us - either I bury it or I pass it on.
“All we were doing was passing along information,” he said.
In an exclusive interview with BuzzFeed News at the Trump International Hotel, the 47-year-old former stockbroker insisted he and Fruman were not paid for acting as intermediaries between the Ukrainian officials and Giuliani. “Something terrible happened and we’re finally going to get to the bottom of it.” Parnas said he expected the information that he and Fruman advanced to become an important focus of Barr’s inquiry, and to dominate the debate in the run-up to the 2020 election. Prosecutors in Kiev announced in March that they would investigate the officials accused of trying to steer the election in Clinton’s favor - a month after meeting with Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani - and Trump applauded the plan in an interview with Fox News, calling the allegations “big” and “incredible.” The next month, Attorney General William Barr announced he had appointed a federal prosecutor to lead a probe into the origins of the Mueller investigation. Meanwhile, the two men - both of whom have troubled financial histories - rose to prominence in Republican circles, meeting with party leaders while injecting hundreds of thousands of dollars into top Republican committees and dozens of candidates’ campaigns.Īs they carried out their campaign, they used their proximity to the White House to tout a new business they set up to sell natural gas in Ukraine, with photos posted on Facebook showing Parnas posing with President Trump in the White House and top House members on Capitol Hill. They also waged an aggressive campaign in the United States, staying at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, and meeting with key members of Congress as they joined in a successful push that led to the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine after she angered their allies in Kiev. And they pushed for a probe into accusations that Ukrainian officials plotted to rig the 2016 election in Hillary Clinton’s favor by leaking evidence against Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair, in what became a cornerstone of the special counsel’s inquiry. The two men urged prosecutors to investigate allegations against Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden. In a whirlwind of private meetings, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman - who pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican campaigns and dined with the president - gathered repeatedly with top officials in Ukraine and set up meetings for Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani as they turned up information that could be weaponized in the 2020 presidential race. Two unofficial envoys reporting directly to Donald Trump’s personal lawyer have waged a remarkable back-channel campaign to discredit the president’s rivals and undermine the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian meddling in US elections.
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