Proof surfaces that Russia bankrolled Donald Trump’s Ukraine extortion plot
Earlier this evening we brought you the news that the Feds at the SDNY are now seeking to revoke Lev Parnas’ bail, accusing him of having lied about his assets and income. We pointed out that if the judge agrees and locks Parnas up, it’ll increase the odds that he ends up cutting a plea deal against Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Now it turns out the story is far uglier than we knew – but more or less exactly as ugly as we suspected.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has long argued that with Donald Trump and his scandals, all roads lead to Vladimir Putin. It wasn’t difficult to parse that while his decision to withhold U.S. military aid from Ukraine was aimed at boosting his own weak reelection odds, it was also a gift to Putin, who has spent years trying to weaken and overtake Ukraine.
Sure enough, Bloomberg is reporting additional details about Lev Parnas and his finances. Parnas received a million dollar payoff from a bank account in Russia in September, at a time when he was still helping to carry out Trump’s Ukraine extortion scandal. In other words, Russia was bankrolling the Ukraine extortion plot.
This still leaves questions as to precisely where this money came from. Almost by definition, a million dollar payout from Russia would have originated from a Russian oligarch. It’s not clear if the money came from Lev Parnas’ close associate Dmitry Firtash or another oligarch. But it’s difficult to imagine that anyone in Russia could have been bankrolling this operation at this high of a dollar amount, without Vladimir Putin having been at least indirectly behind it.
