{"id":27309,"date":"2020-01-16T11:34:49","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T17:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=27309"},"modified":"2020-06-27T22:42:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-28T03:42:21","slug":"parnas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/01\/16\/parnas\/","title":{"rendered":"Parnas"},"content":{"rendered":"

There seems to be a lot of reporting on Lev Parnas today, for example from<\/a> Maddowblog<\/strong><\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

In early October, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Donald Trump \u201crepeatedly involved\u201d Vice President Mike Pence in the Ukraine scheme, including an instance in which the president \u201cinstructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May \u2013 an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president\u2019s calendar \u2013 when Ukraine\u2019s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Rachel [Maddow] explored this in more detail with Lev Parnas, a Rudy Giuliani associate involved with executing the Ukraine scheme, and he said he\u2019d communicated to Ukrainian officials that Pence would not attend Zelensky\u2019s inauguration unless he agreed to announce an anti-Biden investigation.<\/p>\n

The day after Parnas\u2019 meeting with a top Zelensky aide,\u00a0Pence\u2019s trip was scrapped<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Parnas also said Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s planned trip to attend Zelenskiy\u2019s inauguration in May was canceled because the Ukrainians did not agree to the demand for an investigation of the Bidens. \u201cOh, I know 100 percent. It was 100 percent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked whether Pence was aware of a \u201cquid pro quo\u201d around the visit, Parnas replied by quoting Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who said during the House impeachment inquiry: \u201cEverybody was in the loop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maddow said her show asked for comment from Pence and had not received a response.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s many more such stories out there.<\/p>\n

While it’s tempting to take this seriously, and given the corruption of Trump and many of his nominees to posts all the way up to Cabinet level, in all honesty I should like to see some independent confirmations of Parnas’ assertions. Right now it just seems to be his word. Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler) agrees<\/a> with me:<\/p>\n

In short, for the last 18 months, Parnas has played a key part in creating the right wing echo chamber, one that \u2014 particularly because the addled Rudy is a trusted advisor \u2014 forms a key part of how Trump understands the world. One way Parnas did that was by recruiting Ukrainians who were, for very crass reasons, willing to tell Trump and the rest of the frothy right what they wanted to hear, even though it was assuredly not true. …<\/p>\n

Last night\u2019s interview [with Rachel Maddow] continued that grift, only he moved to spin an echo chamber for the left this time. He emphasized \u2014 and Maddow predictably responded \u2014 some of the key allegations Democrats most want to be true. Mike Pence is closely involved, Parnas revealed, and while nothing he revealed would amount to impeachable conduct, Democrats immediately latched onto the possibility it would be. Everyone was involved, Parnas confirmed, including Devin Nunes and Bill Barr. It was all about Biden, Parnas almost certainly lied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seeing as he’s under indictment, this would be fairly ballsy, but not unheard of. The Democrats and other Trump-despisers would be best advised not to have a collective orgasm over anything Parnas reveals until consilience<\/em>[1]<\/sup><\/a> is achieved.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a>1<\/sup> Consilience<\/a><\/strong> is a term for strong conclusion drawn from independent<\/em> lines of evidence, usually used in science and historical studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There seems to be a lot of reporting on Lev Parnas today, for example from Maddowblog: In early October, the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0reported\u00a0that Donald Trump \u201crepeatedly involved\u201d Vice President Mike Pence in the Ukraine scheme, including an instance in which the president \u201cinstructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27310,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27309\/revisions\/27310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}