Rudy Giuliani has a whole new problem
Things took an ugly enough turn for Rudy Giuliani last night when ABC News reported that his associate Lev Parnas had given Ukraine scandal tapes of Rudy and Donald Trump to the House impeachment inquiry. Now things have taken an even uglier turn for Rudy today, and he’s suddenly dealing with a whole different kind of problem.
The money trail in the Ukraine scandal points to Rudy Giuliani having worked for a company controlled by Lev Parnas, who in turn worked as a translator for imprisoned Kremlin-connected oligarch Dmitry Firtash. So all along it’s looked like the Kremlin was at least indirectly behind the Trump-Rudy plot against Joe Biden in Ukraine. And why not? As Nancy Pelosi likes to point out, with Trump, all roads lead to Putin.
The difficulty has been in trying to establish the specifics of how and why these people all came together. However, that apparently just changed. The New York Times is reporting that – according to “one of Mr. Giuliani’s associates” – the deal was that Team Trump would help Firtash with his legal troubles in the United States, if Firtash helped Team Trump come up with fake Biden scandals to help with the election.
What’s notable here is that the sourcing is somewhat specific. Which of Rudy Giuliani’s “associates” is now leaking dirt about him to the New York Times? Lev Parnas has already begun spilling his guts in other ways; is he also the source here, or is it one of Rudy’s other associates? In any case, if this reporting holds up, then it means Trump and Rudy offered to help get a Kremlin guy out of house arrest in exchange for rigging the 2020 election in Trump’s favor.
