Rudy Giuliani associate and potential Ukraine middleman Lev Parnas has hired former Trump attorney John Dowd to represent him.
Dowd confirmed the representation in a message to TPM, saying that it was in connection with congressional inquiries. Parnas separately confirmed to Mother Jones that he hired Dowd.
Parnas drew TPM’s attention first for his connection to a bizarre $325,000 contribution that flowed from one of his companies into the pro-Trump America First Action Super PAC.
The Soviet-born but Miami-based businessman is a longtime friend of Giuliani’s, and reportedly played a role in brokering the former New York City’s mayor’s attempt to pressure Kyiv into fabricating dirt about the origins of the Mueller investigation and Joe Biden.
Giuliani has said that Parnas began to introduce him to Ukrainian officials in November 2018.
Parnas reportedly traveled to Kyiv in 2019 with another Soviet-born business associate named Igor Fruman as part of the Giuliani effort. The two wound up tangling with a local oligarch named Ihor Kolomoisky in a mysterious interaction that ended with Parnas and Fruman claiming to fear for their lives.
An American analyst describes Kolomoisky as “super dangerous.” The notorious oligarch returned from a long exile and immediately threatened and defamed two Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. They are my clients and I have advised them to press charges.
— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) May 18, 2019
The pair are the focus of inquiries by the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight Committees into the joint Giuliani-Trump pressure campaign, which have pushed the House Democratic majority towards impeaching Trump.
This isn’t Dowd’s first brush with Trumpworld: the attorney negotiated with Mueller while representing the President, and left a notorious voicemail for Michael Flynn’s lawyer trying to dissuade the ex-national security adviser from cooperating with the investigation.
