The lawyer for Ukraine billionaire gas middleman Dmytro Firtash who wired $1 million to Lev Parnas’s wife confirmed that he was the source of the money, Reuters reported.
But Dubai-based Swiss attorney Ralph Oswald Isenegger told Reuters in a statement that he was not acting on Firtash’s behalf in sending the money.
Isenegger reportedly claimed that the $1 million was a loan, with interest. Manhattan federal prosecutors said in court on Tuesday that the money had been “papered over” as an unsecured loan, and suggested that it was, in fact, “income.”
The lawyer for the Ukrainian oligarch reportedly added that he had demanded that Parnas and his wife, Svetlana, return the $1 million after the south Florida businessman was arrested.
“Neither Mr. Parnas nor his wife has responded to my request,” Isenegger reportedly said.
I think someone mentioned to Firtash that if the US ever gets their hands on his corpus, that “loan” to Parnas could turn into lots more indictables than what he’s being extradited over.
We’re always told that this person or that person didn’t supply the money.
And yet the money always comes from an easterly direction (even if Firtash has been residing in Central Europe because of legal problems).
How long will Republicans pretend that we don’t have a Russia problem? Even Ukraine is having trouble erasing the influence.
A fish rots from the head down. People don’t seem to understand that…
“The lawyer for the Ukrainian oligarch reportedly added that he had demanded that Parnas and his wife, Svetlana, return the $1 million after the south Florida businessman was arrested.”
In other words, it morphed into a “loan” that he wanted “paid back” the second he found out that he wasn’t going to get whatever he was actually trying to buy with it.
If you want to know what the next phase of investigation is post-impeachment, it’s right here. It’s about fully exposing and establishing criminal conduct for what happens in broad daylight on 5th Avenue every day. Russians are bribing key GOP operatives and politicians to keep Trump afloat. Trump and Russia have an open partnership where Trump serves Russia’s interests and Russia does what it can to prop Trump up with Trump & pals getting opportunities to grift. This is a massive bribery and corruption scandal that we’ve all read about in books and seen in movies.
Why is this not being more fully exposed?
Our IC is simply not very good at this. They have no means to counter a threat when the threat comes from inside the house. The fact that they can’t come out and say that the POTUS is a threat to national security and must be curtailed, stopped or removed is a big problem. In addition, even if they can’t go to those lengths b/c they’re confused about loyalty to the POTUS vs the Constitution, they’re just not very good at the basic skills of spy craft and research. How is it that USIC has no transcript of Trump’s meetings with Putin? And if they do and they haven’t turned it over to Congress, that’s even worse. But I think it’s the former. There’s no indication that the USIC has done anything to counter how Trump runs circles around the bureaucracy to do what Putin directs him to do. How is it that they haven’t followed the money trail that was detailed over 2 years ago in the Dallas Morning News about the amount of Russian money that made its way into GOP coffers?
Our DOJ is 75% corrupted (and that may be generous). SDNY has to indict Rudy Giuliani and shove Barr to the side. If they do, they’ll earn my respect. Until then, they’re soft noodles who will simply be owned by Trump.
That’s why impeachment is important. It shows that there is firm resistance from within the machinery of the US gov’t. Once one stands up to a tyrant, it becomes contagious. It really doesn’t take much for SDNY to indict Rudy and declare that they’re expanding their investigation to cover UKR matters. It really doesn’t. Perhaps impeachment is that tipping point to move the rest of the gov’t, the press and the public into action to remove this tyrant from office.