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The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released a collection of new evidence obtained from Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, that looks into how Giuliani communicated with the president of Ukraine on behalf of President Donald Trump.
Among the documents was a previously unseen handwritten note by Parnas, a Florida businessman who helped Giuliani try to dig up dirt on one of Trump’s political rivals.
The note read: “Get Zalensky to announce that the Biden case will be investigated.”
The new evidence also includes letters sent to then-Ukranian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky from Giuliani and WhatsApp message exchanges between Parnas and a man who apparently tracked the location of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in March.
The House Intelligence Committee obtained more documents from Rudy Giuliani's associate Lev Parnas to use as evidence in Trump's impeachment inquiry.
U.S. House Intelligence Committee
U.S. House Intelligence Committee
Parnas and Igor Fruman, another Giuliani associate, were arrested in October on claims that they funneled foreign money into Trump’s presidential campaign as the House continued its impeachment inquiry.
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As seen in the documents obtained by lawmakers, Parnas received messages from Republican Robert F. Hyde in March 2019 with details on Yovanovitch’s location in Ukraine from people who were apparently spying on the diplomat in Kyiv. Hyde is a Connecticut congressional candidate, The Daily Beast confirmed with Parnas’s lawyer.
“Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch. I’ll get right in that,” Hyde wrote to Parnas before sending him a series of updates on her location and movements.
“They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” Hyde said in another message. “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money... what I was told.”
Robert F. Hyde was apparently tracking the location of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, according to WhatsApp messages to Parnas.
HuffPost US
Hyde apparently had contacts in Kyiv who were willing to track Yovanovitch for money.
HuffPost US
In response to his messages to Parnas, Hyde told NBC News that he wrote them when he was drinking and called Schiff a “turd.”
“How low can liddle Adam Bill Schiff go. To take some texts my buddy’s and I wrote while we had a few drinks to some dweeb I met a few times,” he said in a text message to NBC’s Josh Lederman.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) sent the additional evidence to the House Judiciary Committee on two flash drives on Tuesday. It was submitted to be included as part of the official records sent to the Senate, along with the articles of impeachment against Trump.
Schiff described the documents as “pertinent to the impeachment inquiry” in a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.).
“Despite the President’s unprecedented and sweeping obstruction of our impeachment inquiry, we have continued to collect additional evidence relevant to the President’s scheme to abuse his power by pressing Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election for the President’s benefit,” the chairs of four House committees said in a statement Tuesday.
The four ― Schiff, Nadler, Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) ― described the evidence submitted by Parnas as a “trove of documents that provide more information about the effort to coerce Ukraine into helping the President’s reelection campaign.”
Weeks after his arrest, Parnas agreed to comply with the impeachment inquiry by testifying and giving lawmakers access to phone records and documents seized during his arrest. Over the weekend, Parnas’s attorney asked a judge to allow him to hand over even more documents that were “essential” to Trump’s impeachment inquiry, including records from two cellphones and an iPad.
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The House is scheduled to vote on whether to send the articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate on Wednesday.