That warble you just heard is the sound of a canary singing its heart out.
Lev Parnas, the Trump factotum who was tasked with pressuring Ukraine to dig for (fake) dirt on Joe Biden, is spilling the beans to whomever will listen – Rachel Maddow, The New York Times, CNN – and even if it’s premature to hail him as a combination of John Dean, Watergate burglar James McCord, and mob snitch Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, there’s one thing we do know for sure:
Nancy Pelosi was absolutely right to sit on the House impeachment articles, holding them in limbo for a month, postponing (until yesterday) their transmission to Trump’s servile Senate Republicans.
By foiling the Senate GOP’s rush to exonerate Trump, she focused public attention on Mitch McConnell’s American refusal to call trial witnesses. And by giving the case more time to develop, Pelosi has been vindicated by a flood of new damning evidence – all of which fuels the push for trial witnesses.
In the last few weeks, we’ve learned (among other things) that Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was a key player in the plot to freeze Ukraine’s military aid in order to pressure Ukraine for Biden dirt; that the Pentagon and then-national security adviser John Bolton were adamantly opposed to the freeze; that Bolton privately urged Trump to unfreeze the aid, but that Trump refused; and that Michael Duffey, a Trump appointee in the federal budget office, specifically emailed: “Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold” the military aid. (News flash: The U.S. Government Accountability Office said today that Trump broke the law by withholding the military aid.)
And now we have dirt-digging foot soldier Lev Parnas, who says he was instructed by Rudy Giuliani to tell Ukrainian officials that all U.S. aid would stay frozen unless President Zelensky agreed to publicly announce a probe of Joe Biden and son. (In the U.S. criminal code, it’s illegal to solicit foreign help in an American election.) Parnas, who was indicted last fall for campaign finance abuses, recently got a court’s permission to share delectable documents with House impeachment probers. (Scrawled on hotel stationary: “get Zelensky to announce that the Biden case will be investigated.”) And Parnas’ current media blitz is the cherry on top.
For instance: “I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president…President Trump knew exactly what was going on…He was aware of all my movements.”
For instance: Pressuring the Ukrainians to investigate Biden was “all about 2020, to make sure (Trump) has another four years. There was no other reason for doing it.”
For instance: He says that Mike Pence was part of the plot to pressure Ukraine for Biden dirt. He quoted Gordon Sondland, the Trump-appointed ambassador, who testified during the House impeachment inquiry: “Everybody was in the loop.”
For instance: “The truth is out now, thank God. I thought they were going to shut me up and make me look like the scapegoat and try and blame me for stuff.”
So says a central player in Trump’s manifest abuse of power. Remember when Trump’s House Republican toadies dismissed all the evidence as “hearsay?” Good times, good times.
Just for the record, Trump’s regime is denying everything. Trump’s press secretary, who never holds press briefings, says that whatever Parnas says is part of the Democratic “sham.” And Trump says he has never met Parnas – which is odd, given the photographic evidence of Trump and Parnas together, flashing thumbs up in ritual MAGA fashion.
The big question, going forward, is whether four Senate Republicans will grow spines and join Democrats in a majority vote to call trial witnesses. Parnas underscores the need for witnesses, and that’s what most Americans want. According to the new Quinnipiac poll, 66 percent (including 39 percent of Republicans) want John Bolton to testify. According to the new Morning Consult/Politico poll, 57 percent want the Senate to call witnesses, and only 24 percent say no.
Senate Republicans – at least four of them – might want to remember what John Adams said in 1770: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
More likely, they’ll stonewall witnesses – and thus confirm this pained lament, from reality-based Republican strategist Stuart Stevens: “
A party without a governing theory, a higher purpose or a clear moral direction is nothing more than a cartel, a syndicate that exists only to advance itself. There is no organized coherent purpose other than the acquisition and maintenance of power…I’d like to say that I believe the party I spent so many years fighting for could rise to the challenge of this moment. But there have been too many lies for too long.”