Lev Parnas, the Rudy Giuliani associate who allegedly aided digging up dirt on President Trump’s political enemies, is set to appear on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show on Wednesday night, a move that would make any sensible lawyer want to piss themselves. And that’s just the beginning of a nutty slew of information that has come out in the last 24 hours about Parnas, the Ukranian-American businessman who was indicted for alleged campaign finance violations last fall.
NPR reports that Parnas provided a “trove” of documents which suggested that former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was under surveillance by individuals associated with Giuliani (in other words, goons).
From NPR:
But it’s a string of WhatsApp messages from late March 2019 taken from Parnas’ phone that is drawing the most scrutiny. In those texts, Parnas and an associate named Robert F. Hyde, a retired Marine who is running for Congress as a Republican in Connecticut, criticize Yovanovitch, who was still a U.S. ambassador at the time.
“Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch. I’ll get right in that,” Hyde wrote in an encrypted message to Parnas. He added, “She under heavy protection outside Kiev.”
The messages also seem to indicate that Hyde might have been involved in monitoring Yovanovitch and her movements.
And here’s another fun nugget from the documents, per the Washington Post:
Notes taken by Lev Parnas — who is an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and is now facing federal criminal charges — show what his and Giuliani’s mission was when they got in touch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “get Zalensky to Announce that the Biden case will Be Investigated.”
Trump is probably having a normal one about all of this!
Is Parnas going to go full Giuliani during this interview? Let’s find out.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s new French bulldog, Deco, accompanied her to work today. The dog isn’t a rescue, and it probably can’t breathe for shit, but it’s admittedly a very cute lil’ creature.
Ocasio-Cortez shared a few videos on her Instagram story and some photos on her Twitter account. Deco love getting pets by Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. Good boi.
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- Bernie Sanders received the endorsement of immigrant rights organization Make the Road Action. [Politico]
- Does Chris Matthews know who John Brown is?
- An appeals court blocked the purging of over 200,000 people from Wisconsin’s voter rolls. [Washington Post]
- In creepy news, Michigan State Senator Peter Lucido told a reporter that a group of schoolboys could “could have a lot of fun” with her. [Michigan Advance]
- Virginia has called a state of emergency after armed militias allegedly threatened to storm the state capitol at an upcoming gun rights rally in Richmond. [Vice News]
- The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in the hopes of stopping a policy that sends asylum seekers to Guatemala. [CBS]