Lev Parnas arrives on the Hill to listen to Senate impeachment trial
Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, arrived Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill to listen to President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
Parnas, flanked by his attorney Joseph Bondy and others, made his way from Union Station to the Capitol while walking among a throng of reporters.
It’s unclear where Parnas will be watching the proceedings from, as a federal judge on Tuesday denied his request to have his GPS device removed, thereby quashing his request to attend the trial because Senate rules do not permit any electronic devices in the gallery.
Asked whether anything specific would be submitted by them to lawmakers during Wednesday’s proceedings, Parnas and Bondy said they didn’t plan to do so. The purpose of their presence, they said, was to “watch (a) momentous event.”
Parnas told CNN his goal is “to look at these senators and have them look at me and see we need to call witnesses … me and (former national security adviser) John Bolton … the two of us put all the dots together.”
He added that Trump “knew everything that was going on in Ukraine” and that there were “many” quid pro quos before July 25, the day Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke during a phone call that is at the heart of Trump’s impeachment.
“We’ll say more later on,” Parnas told CNN.
Trump and his legal defense at the impeachment trial have vehemently denied the President did anything wrong.
Parnas said walking to the Capitol felt surreal, adding that God has “been great and (the) truth has come out.”
“Next, call Bolton and me (as witnesses),” he said.
Parnas has been cooperating with the House impeachment investigators, providing documents, text messages and an audio recording from an April 2018 dinner that captured Trump ordering the removal of Marie Yovanovich, then the US ambassador to Ukraine.
Bondy has been trying to get Parnas called as a witness in the impeachment trial and has tweeted at individual senators.
The attorney said on Tuesday prosecutors did not object to Parnas attending the trial but did object to removing the tracking device. Earlier on Tuesday, Bondy asked the judge to modify his client’s bail conditions — which require him to wear the GPS-monitoring ankle bracelet and confine him to his home in Florida — so Parnas could sit in the Senate chamber and observe the proceedings.
In a letter to the judge Tuesday, Bondy said he had received tickets to the trial from the office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, to attend an afternoon session.
