The Trump team just can’t get enough of their collusion with foreign powers, can they? Buzzfeed News has now revealed just how much has gone on behind the scenes of the president’s camp’s incessant drum-beating about the supposed role Ukraine has played in corruption targeting their own side. According to the publication, two men named Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (both of whom were born in the Soviet Union and eventually become U.S. citizens) have been operating alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as essentially unofficial envoys between the president’s team, Ukrainian authorities, and others. At no point have they registered as foreign agents, despite their lobbying in the United States for the foreign cause of the Ukrainian authorities who are on Trump’s side.
Former federal prosecutor Kenneth McCallion responded to the news by sharing:
‘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.’
The two men in question have played a role in everything from the Trump team’s baseless claims about former Vice President Joe Biden pursuing a shift in power in Ukraine that would benefit his own family to their again baseless assertions that U.S. officials have collaborated with some Ukrainian figures against the Trump team through means like the leak of documents showing former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s financial entanglement with the country’s former pro-Russian government.
In the Biden case, Parnas (the only central figure in this story who would actually speak to media) “said the behind-the-scenes efforts started in late 2018 when Fruman received a call from “an acquaintance” in Ukraine who wanted to set up a meeting with the country’s most controversial prosecutor,” meaning Viktor Shokin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was dismissed after Biden demanded as much during his time serving alongside President Barack Obama. Parnas and Fruman eventually helped set up a Skype chat between Giuliani himself and Shokin, who relayed the info that “he had overseen an investigation into a large energy company that was paying up to $50,000 a month to Biden’s son Hunter” before Joe helped get him out of office. Key information left out of these exchanges and the Trump camp’s subsequent surge of public angst includes that there’s no evidence Joe even knew of his son’s involvement with the company, numerous global interests besides Biden had been pushing for Shokin’s removal, and the probe was apparently even closed up by the time Shokin left office. That hasn’t stopped the Trump camp though.
Parnas and Fruman also collaborated in the surge of criticism that helped drive baseless claims that “Americans in the US Embassy in Ukraine had tried to rig the 2016 election in favor of Clinton” via leaking that intel about Manafort. In that case, the two men helped set up meetings between Giuliani and Ukraine’s new prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko. The tumult surrounding this baseless spectacle of a conspiracy theory eventually helped drive U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch from her post.
Again, Parnas and Fruman participated in all of this — and more, having tried to connect the Trump team with new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, among other things — without having any officially recognized role in either the Trump administration or campaign. Instead, the president’s re-election bid in which he could weaponize some of the info they’ve been after has again turned to what at best are shady backroom deals.
Featured Image via screenshot
