Trump’s Watergate Burglars, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Just Got Arrested
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The campaign-finance charges involve Parnas and Fruman allegedly violating federal law by funneling several million dollars to Pete Sessions, a former House Republican from Texas. Sessions was valuable to their operation because he publicly demanded the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador (who was subsequently fired.) Lachlan Markay detailed the connection between Parnas, Fruman, and Sessions earlier this week.
But ultimately, the campaign-finance violations are a small part of their overall plot. Parnas and Fruman were the rough equivalent of the Watergate burglars. A July profile of the two, by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, creates the distinct impression that both men are goons. Not violent goons, but people who specialize in highly unethical or illegal activity that may involve organized crime.
Parnas and Fruman were working with Rudy Giuliani, who represents the two as their lawyer, to encourage various Ukrainians to investigate Trump’s opponents in Ukraine. Their work initially focused on discrediting the Mueller investigation, and later evolved to include pursuing unsubstantiated allegations against the Biden family. At the same time they were advancing Trump’s agenda, they were working on a side hustle in which they tried to push Ukraine’s state-controlled energy sector to sign them up to export liquid natural gas. The gas proposal appears to be their payoff: They could let Ukraine know they represented Trump, and Ukraine would therefore have an incentive to throw some business their way, despite their lack of expertise in the inner workings of the energy business.
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The Wall Street Journal reports Fruman and Parnas had lunch with Giuliani yesterday, before their arrest at the airport with one-way tickets to leave the country. This might be taken as more reason to suspect that the men charged with carrying out Trump’s foreign policy in Ukraine had a less than innocent state of mind.
The campaign-finance charges involve Parnas and Fruman allegedly violating federal law by funneling several million dollars to Pete Sessions, a former House Republican from Texas. Sessions was valuable to their operation because he publicly demanded the firing of Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador (who was subsequently fired.) Lachlan Markay detailed the connection between Parnas, Fruman, and Sessions earlier this week.
But ultimately, the campaign-finance violations are a small part of their overall plot. Parnas and Fruman were the rough equivalent of the Watergate burglars. A July profile of the two, by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, creates the distinct impression that both men are goons. Not violent goons, but people who specialize in highly unethical or illegal activity that may involve organized crime.
Parnas and Fruman were working with Rudy Giuliani, who represents the two as their lawyer, to encourage various Ukrainians to investigate Trump’s opponents in Ukraine. Their work initially focused on discrediting the Mueller investigation, and later evolved to include pursuing unsubstantiated allegations against the Biden family. At the same time they were advancing Trump’s agenda, they were working on a side hustle in which they tried to push Ukraine’s state-controlled energy sector to sign them up to export liquid natural gas. The gas proposal appears to be their payoff: They could let Ukraine know they represented Trump, and Ukraine would therefore have an incentive to throw some business their way, despite their lack of expertise in the inner workings of the energy business.
...
The Wall Street Journal reports Fruman and Parnas had lunch with Giuliani yesterday, before their arrest at the airport with one-way tickets to leave the country. This might be taken as more reason to suspect that the men charged with carrying out Trump’s foreign policy in Ukraine had a less than innocent state of mind.