When Senate refused to hear testimony, Lev Parnas spilled it to Maddow

Watch the Video of Lev Parnas Reading Opening Statement

Written Statement of Lev Parnas, March 19, 2024

To all the Honorable members of Congress, I am humbled and thankful to appear here before the House Oversight Committee today under oath, for the sole purpose of telling the truth. From soon after my arrest on October 9, 2019 up to now, I have been steadfastly attempting to share the irrefutable truth with you. The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and various individuals in government and media positions, all of whom worked to create a web of falsehood. They did this purely to serve their own interests, knowing that it would undermine the strength of our nation.
I come before you as a concerned American citizen who loves this country, and as a man who has faced up to his own wrongdoings. From November 2018 to October 2019, I was a key participant in and witness to numerous efforts to prove that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were linked to corruption in Ukraine. Rudy Giuliani, on behalf of then-president Donald Trump, tasked me with a mission to travel the globe finding dirt on the Bidens so that an array of networks could spread misinformation about them. They sought to damage the Bidens’ reputations and secure the 2020 election for Trump.

When I was arrested, I was initially accused of being involved in a plot to remove Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine whom Trump had fired in April 2019. I was smeared by this false information, and also untrue claims that I was fleeing the country.

As my case continued, the Department of Justice decided they had no interest in Ukraine, sanitizing their marquee claims about Ambassador Yovanovich from my indictment. Instead, I was prosecuted for federal campaign finance and unrelated fraud charges. I was found guilty, served my sentence, and remain on supervised release. I do not hide from that reality, because it is part of my truth. The best way to serve the United States now is to explain everything, which is what I have tried to do from the very beginning, only to be silenced repeatedly by those in power who stood to gain from Trump’s re-election.

But I will be silenced no longer. We are at the precipice of history, a time when not just our country but the world depends on the outcome of the next U.S. election. I have always been ready, willing, and able to stand in front of this Committee, the DOJ, Special Counsel, and any other Committee or federal authority, and answer all questions. Today, with your help, we can finally put an end to this wild goose chase once and for all. Then you can get back to the important work of representing the bests interests of the American people.

Please consider that the facts of what I say here have never changed from the moment I submitted everything to Congress during the first Trump impeachment in Fall 2019. I have never wavered from saying that there was no evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine – because there truly was none. On the contrary, by setting up a search for false criminality, every individual majorly involved in this plan was disguising their own criminal activity. That persists to this very day: The impeachment proceedings that bring us here now are predicated on a bunch of false information that is being spread by the Kremlin.

Throughout this entire situation, no credible source has ever provided proof of Joe or Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption in Ukraine. The FBI, CIA, and NSA have all failed to produce any evidence of criminal activity. No respectable Ukrainian official has ever said that the Bidens did anything illegal. Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, has himself stated “there is not one single word of truth” to these allegations about Joe Biden. Yuri Lutsenko, who succeeded Shokin as Prosecutor General, has also confirmed that nothing ties the Bidens to criminal activity in Ukraine. Even when Mykola Zlochevsky, the co-founder and CEO of Burisma, was offered a deal on his own criminal charges by Giuliani in exchange for information on the Bidens, he came up empty.

The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents, which everyone sitting here today knows. FBI informant Alexander Smirnov has admitted to getting all his so-called intelligence on the Bidens from Russia. According to their own statements, federal prosecutors found him guilty of “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections.” And as recently as November 2023, a number of Ukrainian politicians sympathetic to Russia were implicated as having helped funnel false information about the Bidens to Giuliani while also being connected to a Russian foreign influence network.

We cannot ignore the contrast between these sources. I believe that what we are facing now is the culmination of a much larger plan for Russia to crush Ukraine by infiltrating the United States. I am grateful for this Committee’s dedication to finding the truth, which has critical importance for our country’s fate as well as that of Ukraine.

As I share information with you today, I ask you to please bear in mind the following facts:

On April 30, 2018, I was invited to a dinner with then-President Trump as a high-level donor to the Republican Party. At this event, which was recorded, Trump asked me how long Ukraine would last in a war with Russia, to which I replied, “Without us” – meaning American aid – “not very long.”

He also asked my opinion of Marie Yovanovitch as ambassador. Based on what I had heard from my contacts in Ukraine and people in the Republican Party, I knew that Yovanovitch disliked Trump, and I told him she was a problem. But I was completely unprepared for what followed: That Trump immediately turned to one of his advisors and said, “Get rid of her… Take her out.”

Giuliani approached me in November 2018 to ask about my contacts in Ukraine. At the time, I was aware how Trump, Giuliani, Sessions, and others felt about the country. But it escalated that December, at a Chanukah Party encounter in the Red Room of the White House, where Trump, through Giuliani, tasked me with finding the disgraced prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

I met Shokin for the first time in Ukraine to relay Giuliani’s message – that the Trump administration could help him be reinstated in the government, but only if he provided hard evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption. Shokin was eager and willing to help.

Upon my return, Giuliani told me to ask Shokin to fly to the U.S. to meet with Senator Lindsey Graham. But Giuliani stipulated that Shokin should not tell the visa authorities he was meeting anybody, only that he was seeing family in the States. When he applied for his visa, then- Ambassador Yovanovitch denied him.

Several weeks of communications ensued with Giuliani attempting to pressure Shokin for information on the Bidens, with Shokin becoming more and more skeptical. Shokin finally conceded that he had no evidence that either Hunter or Joe Biden had ever interfered with Ukrainian law.

My mission for Giuliani and Trump would come to encompass nearly a year of traveling across the globe to find damaging information on the Bidens. This included trips to Ukraine, Poland, Spain, Vienna, London, and other locations. The assignment led me to speak with several shady characters as well as public figures – sometimes with those two characterizations being one and the same. I communicated with oligarchs, billionaires, politicians, and presidents of different countries. It became evident that Trump and Giuliani were running their own shadow diplomacy.

In my travels, I found precisely zero proof of the Bidens’ criminality. Instead, what I learned in that timeframe was the true nature of the conspiracy that the Kremlin was forcing through Russian, Ukrainian, American, and other channels to interfere in our elections. Ultimately this was meant to benefit Trump’s re-election, which would in turn benefit Vladimir Putin.

This all came to a head with the formation of what we called the “BLT Team.” At Trump’s behest, in early 2019 Giuliani convened a group of political and media professionals for regular strategy meetings at BLT Steak in Washington, D.C. Among others, this group included John Solomon, an investigative reporter for The Hill who had many contacts at FOX News. Then- Congressman Devin Nunes, who had been leading his own investigation into the Bidens, also decided to work with the BLT Team. I coordinated at least two Skype interviews with Ukrainian officials and a Nunes senior staff member for the purposes of Nunes’ investigation. Like my efforts before, these interviews still provided no evidence that the Bidens had done anything unlawful.

Though he did not attend the BLT Team meetings, I was told in that setting that Senator Ron Johnson would be “our guy in the Senate,” responsible for pushing all the information we were getting. But he would actually end up spreading unverified conspiracy theories instead.

Because the BLT Team’s investigations were centered around Biden and Ukraine, I was designated the point person in every matter they pursued. That is how I know today with certainty that these stories were lies.

Every person integral to this shadow diplomacy knew that the Biden corruption rumors were baseless. Then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Senator Ron Johnson, and many other individuals understood that they were pushing a false narrative. The same goes for John Solomon, Sean Hannity, and media personnel, particularly at FOX News, who used that narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 election. They are still doing this today, as we approach the 2024 election.

We cannot divorce the impact of this conspiracy from the Russia-Ukraine war, because Trump has no intention to keep aiding Ukraine. I told him in 2018, and I am telling all of you now, that without the support of the United States and NATO, Ukraine will not be able to withstand the barrage from the Russian Army. Millions of people will suffer and die.

You may think, “What happens in Ukraine is not my problem.” But if we allow Russia to defeat Ukraine, eventually that same suffering will reach American shores. If we do not support Ukraine now, we will see an America where we need to have troops on the ground defending our country, in cities and towns where everyone’s lives as they know it will have been destroyed.

I understand this better than anybody, because I was the messenger that Trump and Giuliani sent to Ukraine to deliver handshake arrangements in 2019. First to Ukraine’s then-president Poroshenko, where the message was that Trump would support Poroshenko in his election if he agreed to investigate the Bidens. Then with Prosecutor General Lutsenko, who agreed to help us dig up information on the Bidens in exchange for a meeting with then-U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. Lutsenko eventually admitted he could find nothing to incriminate the Bidens, and his meeting with Barr never materialized.

One memory from this time especially stuck with me. After a heated argument with Giuliani about his lack of results, Lutsenko turned to me and said, “You Americans constantly talk about fighting political corruption. But how ironic that you are now doing the exact same thing [to Ukraine]. You’re pushing us and forcing us to announce a fake investigation against a political rival for your own gains.”

He was right. On May 11, 2019, ahead of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s inauguration, I was assigned to deliver a quid pro quo to Ukraine’s new president. Meeting with his Chief of Staff, I gave the message as Giuliani specified: Unless Zelenskyy announced an investigation into the Bidens, the U.S. would stop all aid to Ukraine.

This message would be one that Trump would repeat to Zelenskyy through several different members of his team, including then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. “Investigate Joe Biden, or the U.S. will pull its aid.” But Zelenskyy still refused to yield.

There is much more to this story, as you all undoubtedly know. I detailed in my previous letter to this Committee on July 18, 2023 how the BLT Team had developed the idea of linking Hunter Biden’s position with Burisma and the incident with his compromised laptop to their falsities about Joe Biden’s corruption. I explained how we chased every lead on this idea and came up with nothing. How the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, while personally embarrassing, contained no evidence of financial or political criminal activity and had no connection to Joe Biden at all. How Giuliani offered Burisma head Zlochevsky what was essentially a “get out of jail free” card, promising to help him out of being prosecuted by the U.S., if he gave up dirt on the Bidens. Even then, when Zlochevsky had the incentive to lie and save his own skin, the businessman denied that he had any such evidence on the Bidens whatsoever. His statements to that effect, which have been published in the House Oversight Committee’s report, debunk all the conspiracy theories.

Yet the conspiracies persisted. When I realized the true nature of the situation, I took every opportunity possible to speak out, even though it put me at great personal risk. Then-Congressman Devin Nunes, who was the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair at the time, tried to discredit me in countless ways. But as I am sure you all remember, during the impeachment hearings, Congressman Eric Swalwell entered a Daily Beast article into evidence which stated that Nunes and I had been working together. Nunes denied it. The next day, in front of the whole world, Congressman Adam Schiff produced subpoenaed telephone records which showed several coordinated calls between Nunes and me, Giuliani, and the White House. Nunes claimed that my wife, not me, may have called him, but when Committee members questioned him, he could offer no explanation as to why he would have taken several phone calls with her.

Since late 2019, I have tried to convey all of these facts to federal prosecutors, including special prosecutor Scott Brady, but the Justice Department ignored me, apparently electing to listen to compromised informants instead.

I offered to give testimony at the first impeachment hearings in 2019, but there were no witnesses or evidence introduced at the “trial.” Republicans in Congress did not want to have me as a witness then, in any event.

However, despite these high-level professional attempts to silence me, I am standing here now. I will state again for the record that the story of Joe and Hunter Biden’s corruption in Ukraine is false; there is absolutely no evidence to support it. I will repeat that everyone who participated in fabricating these lies knew exactly what they were doing. By giving in to the conspiracy theories, we allow Russia to use our government for malicious purposes, and to reward selfish people with ill-gotten gains. It is time to stand up and recognize the truth at this pivotal moment – for Ukraine, for our country, and for our future.

Thank you to the Committee for allowing me to speak to you. I am grateful that the truth will at last be told. I look forward to answering any and all questions.