he will then swear in all 100 u.s. senators. for now thank you for being here with us. good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. last night on the evening of the impeachment articles against president trump being conveyed from the house to the senate for the start of the senate trial that will decide whether or not president trump is removed from office, last night the committees that conducted the impeachment investigation added a bonus round to the materials that they planned to convey to the senate. alongside the articles of impeachment, they added new evidence. these newly obtained documents and text messages from a man named lev parnas. lev parnas is a soviet-born, russian-speaking u.s. citizen who worked closely with president trump's personal lawyer rudy giuliani on the

scheme in ukraine, for which president trump has now been impeached. the scheme to pressure ukraine into announcing investigations of vice president joe biden and the concurrent use of u.s. military aid and visits with u.s. government officials and other things that the ukrainian government desperately wanted basically as cudgels to try to force them into announcing those investigations about biden. well, now tonight as the articles of impeachment have been walked over to the senate by the impeachment managers, actually basically right as that was happening the impeachment committees in the house, simultaneously to this moment, released some additional phone records from mr. parnas, which have revealed yet further information about who was involved in this scheme and how it worked. well, today in new york city i met with lev parnas, and with his lawyer joseph bondy. and so tonight we are going to present this exclusive interview. mr. parnas has never spoken in a televised interview.

he's not spoken to reporters at all since his name surfaced in conjunction with a scandal and since he was arrested on october 9th, with a one-way ticket at dulles airport. he was charged with federal felony counts for funneling illegal donations to republican candidates and campaigns. mr. parnas is under indictment, awaiting trial in the southern district of new york. he has pled not guilty. he agreed to speak with me today on the condition that his lawyer, joseph bondy, would be seated alongside him throughout the interview. that's a condition i agreed to. to be honest, because i agreed to that condition, i fully expected that it would be mr. bondy, the lawyer, who did most of the talking in this interview. but it did not work out that way. mr. parnas, as you will see here, is absolutely here to speak for himself, and he is more than capable of doing so. he and his attorney have made clear in recent days and weeks that lev parnas does want to testify to the impeachment

investigation. that said, i can't stress enough that he right now is out on bond awaiting trial in federal court on serious felony charges. so the decision for him to do this interview with me today is very unusual. people in that circumstance, in terms of federal felony charges, don't typically do media interviews, but they agreed to sit down with me today, and we did it. let's get right to it. i will tell you in advance, to set the stage, that in this interview you will hear lev parnas make some bombshell assertions about the involvement and knowledge of president trump and vice president mike pence in the ukraine scandal. he will make a specific allegation about the president's unique role in holding up the u.s. aid to ukraine as an additional lever of pressure against the ukrainian government. you will also hear fairly explosive allegations by mr.

parnas about attorney general william barr. he also makes some allegations about several other members of the cabinet. we'll talk about some of those tonight, and we're saving some to talk about tomorrow so we can do some additional reporting around them. on top of all of that, as mr. parnas you'll see makes clear right off the bat, right at the top of the interview, he knows that in addition to all the things he's telling you tonight and they've been revealed in conjunction with the documents in the impeachment investigation, in addition to all of that he says he still has yet more to share. all right. here with go. mr. parnas, mr. bondy, thank you both for agreeing to do this. i know this is a leap of trust to speak publicly in this way for the first time. thanks to both of you for agreeing to do it. >> thanks for having us here. >> thank you. >> let me ask you first lev, did you know that these materials you had handed over to the intelligence committee were boeing going to be released publicly last night? it's landed with quite a splash. it's very provocative material.

were you aware it was going to be made public? >> no, i didn't. yesterday was a very incredible day. it was a godsend with joe's help to be able to get there in time because we didn't think we were going to make it. because we stayed up till i think 2:00 in the morning transferring over stuff to the house that night. >> what was the deadline in terms of the time pressure? >> the deadline was trying to get these things to hipse, the intelligence committee, before the transmission of the articles of the impeachment. with the articles goes the record. and we had reason to believe certain pieces would be put into the public record. we just weren't sure when that would be, and we had no idea what it would be. >> let me ask you, in terms of what we have seen and what was released publicly, not everything was released publicly, some was held back, but in terms of what we have seen publicly does it all look authentic? does any of it seem doctored? in terms of what you handed over. >> yes. >> absolutely.

>> are you still putting together more information to give to congress, or do you feel like the deadline has passed? >> we'll continue making productions, as we get materials from the southern district and anything we can possibly find on our own, through the cloud or whatever it may be, we'll continue to provide things until we're told not to. >> lev, why do you want to testify to the impeachment investigation? >> i want to get the truth out. because i feel it's important for our country. i think it's important for me. i think it's important for the world to know exactly what transpired and what happened because i think there's a lot of things there being said that are not accurate and i just want to make sure that they're accurate. because things happened that need to get out. and i think the world needs to know. what do you think is the main inaccuracy or main lie that's being told that you feel like you can correct? >> that the president didn't know what was going on. president trump knew exactly what was going on.

he was aware of all my movements. i wouldn't do anything without the consent of rudy giuliani or the president. i have no intent, no reason to speak to any of these officials. they have no reason to speak to me. why would president zelensky's inner circle or minister ivakov or president poroshenko meet with me? who am i? they were told to meet with me. that's the secret they were trying to keep. i was on the ground doing their work. >> in terms of the president and what he has said about you, he said about you and from igor fruman, "i don't know those gentlemen, i don't know about them, i don't know what they do." you're saying that was not a true statement from the president? >> he lied. i mean, we're not friends -- when you say friends, me and him didn't watch football together. we didn't eat hot dogs together.

i interacted with him at a lot of events. we had one-on-one conversations at gatherings or these special roundtables where there would be only six people at a stable. we had several of those. and basically, i mean, i was with rudy more than gsh i mean four or five days out of the week. i was in constant contact with him. and i was with rudy when he would speak to the president, plenty of times. i mean, so it's just ludicrous. >> you've been with mr. giuliani when he was on the phone with the president? >> absolutely. >> how did you know rudy was on the phone with the president? was it on speakerphone? >> several times it would be on speakerphone where he would start the conversation on speakerphone and then tick and off and go talk to him. a lot of times it was on the golf course when we were golfing together. i especially remember during the mueller time that rudy said something that was taken out of context and he was screaming at

him so loud. that's when i watched the impeachment and i saw the testimony of the sondland i could understand that you could hear president trump talking next to -- like i heard minimum several times when he was talking with rudy. >> because he speaks loudly on the phone? >> very loudly. >> when you say the president knew about your movements and what you were doing, are you saying specifically, and i want to drill down on that, that the president was aware you and mr. giuliani were working on this effort in ukraine to basically hurt joe biden's political career? he knew that? >> it was all about joe biden, hunter biden, and rudy had a personal thing with the manafort stuff, the black ledger. that was another thing they were looking into, but it was never about corruption. it was it strictly about burisma, which included hunter biden and joe biden. >> it's all about the bidens. it was never about corruption. strictly about joe biden, hunter

biden. in terms of the involvement of the president here, mr. parnas went out of his way to note, to assert that not only was president trump aware of what he and mr. giuliani were doing on his behalf in ukraine trying to gin up this investigation to hurt joe biden, mr. parnas says that the fact that he was working for president trump is a point that was made explicitly over and over again in a very formal way in his dealings, in his meetings in ukraine. >> your attorney told the federal court in new york that you were both rudy giuliani's clients and you were working for mr. giuliani in his capacity as personal attorney to the president. >> correct. >> which, by the transitive property, makes it seem like you were working for the president as part of this legal defense. >> yes, absolutely. >> did anybody in the u.s. government or rudy giuliani

actually convey to officials in ukraine you that were there as representatives of mr. trump? >> absolutely. to each official, i put rudy on the phone with mr. ivakov, several times. yuriy lutsenko at the time, the attorney general. first i said i'm here on behalf of rudy giuliani and the president of the united states. and i would like to put you on speakerphone. which we did. we put rudy on the phone and rudy relayed to him that we were there on behalf of the president of the united states. >> that you were there to speak on behalf of president trump. >> yes, those exact records. >> mr. parnas says when he was taking meetings to advance this scheme, taking meetings with various government officials in ukraine he says it was the regular occurrence, when the meeting started he would put rudy giuliani on the speaker phone in the room and mr. giuliani would say explicitly

that as the president's personal attorney he could affirm that lev parnas was in that meeting in ukraine to speak on behalf of the president of the united states donald trump. in may of last year, may 2019, mr. giuliani started speaking with reporters about his plans to travel himself to ukraine to try to enlist the ukrainian government's assistance to help his client, president trump, basically in his re-election effort. he said he was going to ukraine to try to get them to announce investigations into vice president biden because that would be very helpful to his client. in the resulting firestorm of criticism mr. giuliani's trip was called off in may. when he called off the trip, mr. giuliani made public statements criticizing the new government of ukraine, saying ukraine's new president was surrounded by enemies of the united states. and for ukraine that was a really big deal. ukraine is a country at war with russia. it is a country very much dependent on both the reality

and the perception of their having strong support from the united states government. so when mr. giuliani as the president's personal attorney started making public claims that the ukrainian president was surrounded by enemies of the united states of america and that's why he wasn't going to ukraine, at that point the ukrainian government kind of freaked out. that kind of criticism from the u.s. administration for their new president in ukraine that's a potential death sentence for their country. at the time that happened lev parnas was in ukraine, he was there at that time that happened and he told me today he was tasked by rudy giuliani in that moment to crank up the pressure on the government of ukraine, to make even more insistent and obvious and even more onerous this threat and this demand that ukraine must announce investigations into joe biden or else. >> did you meet with a ukrainian official named sergei shafer?

>> yes, i did. >> sergei shafer is a very senior aide to president zelensky. >> correct. >> it has been reported as far as we understand from public reporting that you conveyed to mr. shafer the exact quid pro quo you that wanted zelensky to announce investigations into joe biden or military aid would not be released to ukraine. is that accurate? >> it was a little more than that. basically the message that i was supposed to -- that i gave sergei shafer was a very harsh message that was told to me to give it to him in a very harsh way, not a pleasant way. >> who told you to give it to him in a harsh way? >> mayor giuliani, rudy. the message was it wasn't just military aid, it was all aid. basically, the relationships would be sour, that we would stop giving them any kind of aid. >> unless. >> unless -- there were several demands at that point.

a, the most important was the announcement of the biden investigation. >> did you also convey to him that the u.s. government would stop showing support for mr. zelensky, that they wouldn't attend the inauguration? >> that was the biggest thing, actually, the main -- because at that time you have to understand the way ukraine is. for president zelensky winning on that platform, become a young president, not having really any experience and being at war with russia at the time, the number one thing was not even aid, and i know it sounds crazy, but more support from the president, by having a white house visit, by having a big inauguration, by having the dignitaries there. that was the key. at that time they were already aware because of their conversations i guess with the embassy that -- vice president pence was supposed to come to the inauguration.

they were planning it out, working on days that would be good for him. at our meeting, i was very, very stern. it was a heated conversation from our part to him, basically telling him what needs to be done, i mean, basically me. in the conversation, i told him that if he doesn't -- the announcement was the key at that time because of the inauguration, that pence would not show up. nobody would show up to the inauguration. >> unless he announced an investigation into joe biden, no u.s. official, particularly vice president pence would not come. >> particularly vice president. >> the david -- >> it was a sunday the 12th. >> i believe it was the following day that in fact vice president pence's visit to the inauguration was canceled.

>> it was after my phone call. the conversation i laid out was basically what i was told to do by giuliani and the president. afterwards i relayed back that he would get back to me later that night and we're supposed to meet. 8:00, 9:00 that night i said any word? any situation? and you can see when a person disconnects you. >> he blocked you? >> he blocked me. i understood that was a no. i called back and said no-go, and i remember rudy going, okay, they'll see. basically the next day pence, to my awareness trump called up and said make sure pence doesn't go there. >> you believe mr. pence's trip to the inauguration was canceled because they didn't agree -- >> i know. it was 100%. the chain of events, that was key to where we are today. after that, take a look at what transpires. next within the next couple days, they realize that now they get word. obviously when pence cans also, they get word.

so now they realized what i was coming was true. >> now they realized when i was threatening them on behalf of the white house that if they didn't announce the biden investigation that vice president pence wouldn't come to the inauguration. they realized when in fact pence canceled his trip to the inau inauguration when i said they would that they knew it was legit. that's essential what he's saying. i love his line that rudy giuliani says, okay, they'll see. in fact, the vice president pence does cancel his trip to the inauguration within 24 hours. but for mr. parnas, that was a key moment for him in terms of being able to continue to work on this effort in ukraine with credibility, because mike pence cancelling his trip to the inauguration was a validating moment. it made clear to the government of ukraine at the highest level, a senior aide to the new to them at the highest levels that lev parnas was legitimately

representing the president of the united states and the white house in this shakedown. >> so vice president mike pence has his planned trip to the inauguration canceled after you were unable to get the ukrainian government to commit to announcing investigations of vice president biden. do you know if vice president pence was aware that was the quid pro quo, and in fact why his inaugural visit was called off? >> i'm going to mix a famous quote by mr. sondland. everybody was in the loop 37. >> you believe vice president pence knew what he was -- knew that his trip to the inauguration was contingent on those investigations being announced? >> again, i know he went to poland also to discuss this on trump's behalf. he couldn't have not known -- after the inauguration september 1st vice president pence goes to

poland and takes a mighting with president zelensky. one of the unusual revelations we've had since the impeachment investigations was a defendant deposit e-mail that was made public through a freedom of information act lawsuit. that defendant deposit e-mail. he tells someone at the pentagon, don't worry, i'm paraphrasing, this uk raib aid problem is all going to be sorted as soon as vice president pence meets president zelensky in poland. frault, that should clear this up. do you understand why the defense department, somebody working in the secretary of defense's office, might have believed that about that meeting? >> well, i understand what was going on. so it makes sense to me because what was transpiring every time like i said to you, every meeting giuliani or i would have or somebody from trump's government would have with the ukrainians they would always agree they were on board, they

were going to make an announcement and then they would walk it back. so after certain instances trump was supposed to meet him -- president trump was supposed to meet zelensky in poland himself. but then he used the xufts hurricane but it wasn't because of the hurricane it was because he was angry zelensky still didn't make any attempt or announcement before he was going to meet him and -- >> how do you know that was the excuse and that wasn't the right reason? >> because i spoke to rudy. we spoke every day. everything was discussed between me, victoria, rudy, the team. >> so prblt trump is supposed to go, he decides not to go. vice president pence -- >> he sooinds sends him instead. basically, to go there and get it straightened out that zelensky was supposed to make another announcement. that didn't happen. that's when bolton, secretary bolton, went over there. i think he has a lot to say.

i'm not going to talk on his -- i think he's a key witness to his conversation with zelensky, and when he came back and why he left, got fired, however you want to look at that. >> let me make sure i understand what you're saying. when vice president pence went over there september 1st, in president trump's stead, you have reason to believe that vice president pence was tasked at that meeting with getting president zelensky to announce investigation into joe biden specifically and tell them they wouldn't get the aid -- >> i don't know exactly, but like i said, the aid itself was something that i think the president decided to do -- what's it called? i think it was a reaction that there was no announcement being made after so many attempts and so many performs. promises. >> holding the aid was the president's sort of innovation to add to the leverage -- >> i think so. >> add to the pressure that people like you and the vice

president and mr. giuliani everybody else involved was putting on ukraine. >> correct. >> when you say mr. bolton may have something to say about this, did mr. boltown know that vice president pence was supposed to secure that agreement? >> i don't know exactly, but i know mr. bolton was definitely involved in the loop because of the firing of marie yovanovitch. also his interactions with rudy giuliani. they were butting hodes. butting heads, and from bolton did not agree with giuliani on the way of dealing with it, so there was tension there. there was definitely tension there. >> but you believe he knows what the administration was pressuring ukraine to do? >> bolton? 100%. he knows what happened there. lev parnas in an exclusive

interview with me today in new york city. we have contacted vice president pence's office for comment tonight on this allegation that his visit to the zelensky inauguration was canceled because ukrainian officials wouldn't announce investigations into joe biden. also the allegations that vice president pence was tasked by getting that commitment in hi follow-up visit when he met with president zelensky in poland. we have asked for comment from mike pence's office on those matters. we have not heard back. we'll let you know if that changes. for his part, john bolton said he would testify to the senate impeachment trial if subpoenaed is to do so. he has made public remarks that he has relevant information about the impeachment investigation, he knows things other people don't know. in terms of the president and this allegation from mr. parnas that the president explicitly

authorized mr. parnas to act on his behalf in mr. parnas's interactions with ukrainian officials, mr. giuliani told them they should listen to mr. parnas as a spokesperson for the president, that he was conveying the full authority of the president's legal representation. this allegation from mr. parnas in addition that the president was fully aware of and involved in awful his efforts. to push the ukraine to nouns these investigations. we asked the white house for comment on mr. parnas's remarks tonight. we have not yet heard back. again, we will let you know if that changes. next here comes the part about them going after ambassador marie yovanovitch. stay with us. assador marie yovanovitch. stay with us ♪ ♪

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there were notes that were released to the intelligence committee that were now released publicly. and i want to if you don't mind ask you about some of these. >> sure. >> were these notes that you took -- i'll show them to you here. they're on ritz carlton vienna letterhead. this is your handwriting? >> yes. >> were these notes from a meeting at which other people were present or were these your notes taken from a conversation or phone conversation you had with somebody else? >> this is a phone conversation with mr. giuliani and basically discussing of certain things that because after that i would have had a conversation with somebody on the zelensky team. i was making notes for myself, what was important to get. >> and you were in vienna at the time. >> correct. >> this first note, get zelensky to announce that the biden case will be investigated. that's mr. giuliani tasking you, that you should get that commitment from zelensky? >> yeah. that was always the main objective. correct.

>> that was always the main objective. get them to announce they're investigating joe biden. lev parnas speaking to me today in new york city. one of the many dark hearts of this impeachment scandal is the virulent and scurrilous and ultimately successful effort to get the u.s. ambassador to ukraine fired. ambassador marie yovanovitch. lev parnas told me today a lot about that effort including at one point apologizing for it, expressing regret. but he also made crystal clear why yovanovitch was targeted the way she was. >> do you believe that part of the motivation to get rid of ambassador yovanovitch, to get her out of post, was because she was in the way of this effort to get the government of ukraine to announce investigations of joe biden? >> that was the only motivation. >> that was the only motivation. >> there was no other motivation. >> if ambassador yovanovitch was in fact targeted by lev parnas and rudy giuliani and president trump and others involved in this effort to get her out of post, get her out of the wei of the bogus joe biden

investigation effort, well, our public understanding of that campaign which was conducted allegedly for that purpose, our public understanding of that campaign took a very dark turn tonight when information lev parnas turned over to impeachment investigators revealed menacing text messages from a republican congressional candidate named robert hyde when appeared in these texts to be reporting in to lev parnas about surveillance of ambassador yovanovitch, asking lev if he wanted her out and purporting to have a contact inside her security team who could facilitate such a thing. i asked lev parnas about those menacing text messages today. he told me that he did not take robert hyde seriously either in general or in relation to those messages. he agreed that the messages were disturbing but says he never believed mr. hyde's assertions about this purported surveillance nor did he believe that ambassador yovanovitch was in actual danger.

watch. >> who is robert hyde? >> he's -- he's a -- he's jufts -- i don't even know how to explain him. >> you can say whatever -- i can bleep you if you need to swear. >> he's a weird character. he's a weird individual. >> you met him where? >> i met him at the -- i think at the trump hotel. yes, the trump hotel. he was a regular at the bar. >> so we now have your text messages with mr. hyde that get into some very dark territory when it comes to ambassador yovanovitch. why did -- at least from the string of text messages that we've seen it seems that it sort of starts, at least what we've got, is you texting him what appears to be anti-yovanovitch information. >> correct. >> why were you sending him that stuff? >> they're not going to the beginning of my text messages. this is just some of the whatsapp stuff, which is very little. but robert hyde was like -- i don't want to say -- somebody that would hang around because he did know all these -- he

didn't know the president and he didn't know rudy giuliani but he did know mccarthy. he knew roger stone. he knew like all these -- because it was like a breeding ground at the trump hotel. everybody event would be there, so everybody would hang out there afterwards, all the meetings would be there. so basically you would see the same people every day all the same congressmen that supported the president would be there and nobody else. he was a fixture on site. he was always there. but he was always drunk. >> you struck up enough of a relationship with him to be texting with him. >> i go roar had more of a relationship with him. usually after we were done for the night the bar scene was happening. and i don't drink. but they would hang out, have a drink at the bar. >> let me ask -- the text message that he sends to you about ambassador yovanovitch are disturbing. >> very. >> what is the context of these text exchanges?

he appears to be giving you very specific information about the ambassador's movements, about her location, about her security situation, calls her the b word over and over again, very hostile to her, and seems to be monitoring her whereabouts. why did those exchanges happen? what was he trying to tell you? >> i don't believe it's true. i think he was either drunk or was trying to make himself bigger than he was. so i didn't take it seriously. and i was trying to -- if you see i didn't even respond to him most of the time and if i did it was something like lol or okay or great or, you know, something like that just to -- because i wouldn't respond for a long time. and i didn't want him to get rowdy if i saw him next time and say oh, why didn't you type a response? i would amuse him until eventually as you can see i cut him off. because what happened when he sent me this i got disturbed, like whoa, is this guy oft wall? i called i think it was joe ahern who was my contact at the superpac america first that knew

of him also because he knew of all the donors. and i asked him, because i said is this guy off the loonies? and he told me stay away from him because he's just got into something with i think greg pence, mike pence's brother, thinking that secret service is after him and somebody wants to kill him. i don't know exactly what happened. but that was my end of -- once he started texting me that that was the end of our relationship. >> the texts where he was supposedly reporting on the whereabouts of the ambassador went on for a week. it wasn't like one drunk night. >> right. >> this went for seven days. he couldn't have been drunk the whole time. >> no, he's drunk the whole time. he wakes up and he's drunk. he starts at 1k3wr6 --6:00 -- i seen him not drunk. >> you thought this was him making it up. you didn't believe he had the ambasssurveillance? >> no. absolutely not. >> i asked mr. parnas several times over the course of our interview if those text messages from robert hyde indicated a real threat to ambassador

yovanovitch. i asked him about it as many different angles as i could come up with. i was insistent in asking. he was adamant in his response. >> so it's clear that you didn't take mr. hyde seriously in terms of the factual claims he was making. but are you clear whether or not there was ever an actual physical threat or a threat of personal intimidation against ambassador yovanovitch? >> never from my side or anybody i knew. >> you didn't worry she was actually in physical danger? >> never. >> because you didn't believe mr. hyde? >> i definitely didn't believe mr. hyde. >> we contacted attorneys for ambassador yovanovitch tonight to let them know about these statements from mr. parnas about this possible threat to their client. they're not commenting tonight. we've got more ahead. including what ends up being a very difficult conversation about the attorney general of the united states, william barr. >> did rudy giuliani tell you

he'd spoken to the attorney general specifically about ukraine? >> not only rudy giuliani. i mean, victoria and joe, they were all best friends. barr was -- attorney general barr was basically on the team. barr was basically on the team marie could only imagine enjoying freshly squeezed orange juice. now no fruit is forbidden. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn?

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small point of personal privilege. one of the weird things for me over the past few months is that right at the time the house announced impeachment

proceedings against president trump i right then that week was publishing a book called "blowout" about the oil and gas industry. and in the book i used the story that i thought was an interesting sidebar story about a natural gas tycoon named dmitri firtash. i used him in my book as the vehicle to tell one story of how russia was deliberately corrupting countries like ukraine that they wanted to keep in their orbit and they were using energy to do so. and then as the book was coming out none other than dmitri firtash was revealed to be one of the forces at work in this corruption scheme in ukraine to try to smear vice president joe biden and fire the u.s. ambassador and withhold u.s. aid to that country and hurt them in their 2350i9 against russia and the whole thing. it was just -- it was uncanny. it was totally unintentional on my part. it was like a little bit of an academic news world car crash. but now today the dmitri firtash

factor here has at least become a little less mysterious. dmitri firtash like lev parnas, the man who i interviewed today, is under federal indictment. in mr. firtash's case he's under indictment on multiple serious felony corruption charges. he's fighting extradition to the united states. he's currently under house arrest in vienna. federal prosecutors in the firtash case have called him an upper echelon associate of russian organized crime. the reason i say this got a little less mysterious today is in my interview with lev parnas this afternoon in new york city he spelled out basically what this oligarch, dmtsry firtash, was doing in the middle of this impeachment scandal with rudy giuliani and the fox news-friendly attorneys victoria toensing and joe digenova and how it ultimately brings us to the desk of the attorney general of the united states william barr. >> so at some point we had a meeting at our -- in our blt office on the second floor.

>> at the trump hotel. >> at the trump hotel. and at that meeting with rudy and victoria and joe john brought up saying he had some incredible information from the firtash camp, which later we found out it was i think lanny davis gave it to him. but that it basically would show that andrew weissman was doing some illegal stuff and offering some deal and that could blow up this investigation up the kazoo. >> can i stop you there for a second? the allegation as you understood it was that andrew weissman, one of the prosecutors working on the mueller team, had made -- had had an interaction with democratdimt roe firtash who was fighting tradition and thanlt rax was something they said would be scandalous work discredit the mueller investigation. >> correct. bewere tasked basically with trying to establish a

relationship. a and. >> specifically troo try to get information to discredit the mueller investigation. >> absolutely. and basically i was given certain documents by john solomon that would validate to dmitri firtash that i was in the loop and that i knew what was going on because mr. firtash is a gentleman that just doesn't see anybody. it's impossible to even get to meet with him. for us to be able to receive information from firtash we had to promise firtash something. so for firtash it was basically telling him that we knew his case was worthless here and that he's being prosecuted for no reason and that basically it could get taken care of. >> this was your offer to mr. firtash, that you could get this prosecution of you dropped. >> your extradition case, correct. that was basically the situation at that point. >> the exchange with mr. firtash was going to be you provide us information that will be detrimental to the public

perception of the mueller investigation and we in turn will get your case dropped at doj so you won't get extradited to the united states anymore. >> yeah. >> mr. digenova and miss toepsing were going to become his lawyers to effectuate this trade? >> correct. >> and you were supposed to broker this? >> correct. >> and what's this $100,000 a month? >> that was expenses for them. >> that's what you were supposed to negotiate that this is what you'd get paid? >> correct. >> were you getting paid in this interaction too? >> mine is not in there. they were getting a million dollars plus $100,000 a month on expenses. and mine was 200,000. >> and what is this? what's that next line? is that the founder of burisma? >> zluceski and -- the ukraine ledger. yeah. >> what are you supposed to be getting about burisma and the uk raip ledger from lanny davis and mr. firtash? >> supposedly john solomon said there was a case about that.

>> that's why this was all in conversation with mr. giuliani. >> correct. >> announcing the biden investigation. and talking about getting fir fash off in this justice investigation it was connected. >> it was all connected. at the end of the day it was to make sure the ukrainians announced the biden investigation. >> so a conservative journalist, john solomon, and two fox news lawyers, joe digenova and victoria toensing, and rudy giuliani and lev parnas are all involved in mr. parnas's telling in an effort to enlits help of a billionaire kremlin-connected allegedly mopped up oligarch to help them pressure the ukrainian government that they must announce investigations of joe biden. and the o'oligarch and his team tells this motley crew that he can help them with that, with getting that from the ukrainian government, he can also help them discredit the mueller investigation. they say that will be great,

what we have to offer you in exchange is we can help stop you from being extradited to the united states to face felony corruption charges from the u.s. department of justice. "washington post" just this afternoon reports that mr. giuliani's involvement with mr. firtash and mr. firtash's sort of team appears to be an ongoing concern, that appears to be live. lev parnas said today his group's advocacy to get the case dropped against mr. firtash did go all the way to attorney general william barr. and he says that attorney general barr was more widely read in on what they were doing. >> did you ever meet with or speak with or have any interactions with attorney general william barr? >> i personally did not speak to him but i was involved in lots of conversations that joe digenova had with him in front of me, rudy had with him in front of me, setting up meetings with dimitri firtash's team. i was involved in that. >> do you know if mr. giuliani

was ever in contact with mr. barr specifically about the fact that he was trying to get ukraine to announce these investigations into joe biden? >> absolutely. >> mr. barr knew about that? >> mr. barr had known everything. it's impossible. >> did rude ji giuliani tell you he'd spoken it's attorney general about ukraine? >> not only rudy giuliani. victoria and joe, they were all best friends. barr was -- attorney general barr was basically on the team. >> when president trump and president zelensky spoke in july, we know from the white house notes of the call that president trump told mr. zelensky that he should contact william barr about these investigations he wanted him to do including joe biden. >> correct. >> that struck light of people as strange. he was purportedly upset and didn't know why he was mentioned in this context but it sounds like it makes sense to you. >> absolutely.

because we knew about the durham investigation and that was going to be part of -- that attorney general barr wanted to get to the bottom of the biden stuff and everything like that. i think he might have gotten upset that trump talked about the president, ousted him maybe. he didn't want to be in the public eye like he was doing it. but it was known internally that he was investigating the investigators. >> do you know if attorney general william barr ever spoke with any ukrainian officials? >> i don't recall at this moment. i'd have to look at my text messages and see. >> he contacted the justice department for comment on mr. parnas's remarks tonight. spokeswoman carrie kuprek did give us a response. it is a two-word response. i guess technically one number and one word. she told us "100% false." and we can attribute that to her. we appreciate the comment. we'll be right back. stay with us. be right back. stay with us so what are you working on?

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u.s. house to the u.s. senate. senate trial is due to formally start tomorrow. one of the awkward revelations in this saga is that while the intelligence committee in the house was leading the investigation of the impeachment scandal, it emerged that the top republican member of congress on that committee, congressman devin nunes of california, appeared himself to have been connected to the people involved in the scandal and potentially to the scandal itself. because congressman nunes has been publicly very vague and defensive about whether he remembers any of his own communications with lev parnas during the time this ukraine scheme was under way, i asked mr. parnas today if he remembers any interactions with congressman nunes. >> do you know congressman devin nunes? >> yes, i do. >> what's been your relationship with him? >> we don't have too much of a relationship. we met several times at the trump hotel. but our relationship started getting basically where it

expanded was when i was introduced to his aide, derek harvey, and the reason why derek harvey was more of -- i understood, i was fold at that time that devin nunes had an ethics -- had something to do with the ethics committee and he couldn't be in the spotlight, he was kind of shunned a little bit, and he was looking into this ukraine stuff also, wanted to help out. and they gave me derek harvey to deal with. >> you told mr. harvey what you and mr. giuliani were working on in ukraine? >> he was aware of that already. he knew everything. >> he already knew that by the time he talked to you. >> he had a lot of information already. >> do you believe he'd gotten that information from mr. giuliani? >> i think that they -- like i said, there was other people doing like this ops research or whatever, i don't know what you call it, but it was coming from

different sides, yeah. >> given that interaction that you just described with congressman nunes and his aide, mr. harvey, does it strike you as unusual or inappropriate that devin nunes would be one of the lead investigators into this scandal on the house intelligence committee? he's obviously the top republican on that committee. >> i was in shock when i was watching the hearings and when i saw devin nunes sitting up there, and then there was a picture where derek harvey was in back over there sitting. i texted my attorney i can't believe this is happening. >> because? >> because they were involved in getting all this stuff on biden. i mean, derek harvey had several skype interviews i set up with different prosecutors like mazar haladitsky, the anti-corruption prosecutor in ukraine.

kulik. so it's hard to see them lie like that when you know it's like that scary because you know he was sitting there and making all these statements and all that when he knew very well that he knew what was going on. he knew what's happening. he knows who i am. >> again, congressman devin nunes is the top republican on the intelligence committee, which is the committee that investigated the ukraine scandal. lev parnas says that mr. nunes and his top staffer were actually involved in the ukraine scandal in the sense that they were involved in the effort to try to gin up a corruption scandal for joe biden in ukraine. mr. parnas says he helped them in that effort. we contacted congressman nunes's office for comment tonight. we did not receive any reply before air time. we'll let you know if that changes before we're off the air. more ahead, stay with us. (whistling)

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so do this, on that, with us. hurry in to get free smartphones now. you raised the issue of ambassador yovanovitch to president trump telling him that he should get rid of her? >> i didn't say get rid of her. i told him she's bad mouthing him. and she's saying bad things about him. >> do you actually believe she did bad mouth him and say bad things about him, or do you think this was part of this disinformation campaign? >> i don't believe it. that's why i want to apologize to her because at that point i believed it, but i don't believe it now after re-evaluating and seeing everything that transpired, looking at the documentation again. >> i did not expect that lev parnas would want to use this interview today to apologize to ambassador marie yovanovitch for his role in the effort to smear her and get her fired, but he did that. the broader context mr. parnas was just talking about there is what he says was a personal interaction he had with

president trump in which he says he witnessed president trump personally ordering the firing of marie yovanovitch. we will have more on that in part two of the lev parnas interview tomorrow night. we'll also have more for you tomorrow night on what mr. parnas alleged today about former energy secretary rick perry and current secretary of state mike pompeo. we're doing a little more reporting on those allegations and claims, we're looking, in fact, at some of the new information that bolsters mr. parnas's case which was just released tonight by the intelligence committee. so again, more on that tomorrow in part two of this interview. i do actually just before i go want to bring you some news that we just got moments ago while we have been on the air tonight just in the past couple of minutes. we got a response from former new york city mayor rudy giuliani to something mr. parnas told us in today's interview. you saw mr. parnas say on the air giuliani had made introductions for him with ukraine officials in which he told the ukrainian officials that mr. parnas spoke as a representative of president trump. mr. giuliani denied to us that

he ever did that. asked whether mr. parnas was speaking on behalf of the president in ukraine, mayor giuliani told us tonight, quote, never. he also called mr. parnas a, quote, sad situation. this was one big day. tomorrow will be another. see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. >> good evening. >> really an extraordinary hour. i think a lot of us as we were watching had one fundamental question. why is he doing this? why has he decided to basically turn on his friends in the conspiracy and talk about the conspiracy? >> so what seemed to emerge today when i was talking with him during the course of the interview and talking with him about the fact that he was going to do the interview is that he really believes the more he makes public about what he saw and what he knows and what he