House Democrats unveiled new evidence Tuesday that they plan to send to the Senate as part of their case to remove President Donald Trump from office, providing text messages and hand-written notes from an indicted Rudy Giuliani associate that add more details about the push for Ukraine to announce an investigation against Trump's political rivals. The documents show how the associate, Lev Parnas, sought to set up a meeting between Giuliani and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and connect with members of his government. The records also add more details about the push by Giuliani to seek the ouster of the then-US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.
The House Intelligence Committee pored through the reams of material provided by Parnas as they prepared for Trump's Senate impeachment trial, and the transition of the material to the Senate suggests House Democrats may cite the documents while presenting their case. Joseph Bondy, Parnas' attorney, hand-delivered the contents of an iPhone to the Intelligence panel's staff over the weekend.
The House panel made some of the documents that Parnas provided public on Tuesday, including a letter from Giuliani to then-President-elect Zelensky requesting a meeting as the President's personal attorney, in which Giuliani said he was working "with the President's knowledge and consent." There are also text messages that show Parnas' communications with members of Zelesnky's aides where he pursued a meeting between Zelensky and Giuliani and provided negative information about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
The text messages provided show exchanges with former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who provided Giuliani with unsubstantiated allegations against the Bidens last year, pushing for the ouster of Yovanovitch. In the texts, he suggested that he wanted Yovanovitch removed if he was going to provide allegations to Giuliani about "B," which could be a reference to Burisma or the Bidens, saying, "If you don't make a decision about Madam — you are bringing into question all my allegations. Including about B."
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