An indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani is willing to testify under oath that aides to Rep. Devin Nunes, the lead Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, ditched a trip to Ukraine to dig up dirt on the 2016 election because they would have had to notify the panel’s chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, according to a report.
Soviet-born Lev Parnas, who has been indicted in Manhattan federal court for campaign finance violations, would tell Congress that Nunes planned to interview two Ukrainian prosecutors who had information valuable to President Trump’s re-election campaign, his lawyer Joseph Bondy told CNBC on Sunday.
But when Nunes’ staff realized that traveling to Ukraine would mean notifying Schiff, the Democratic head of the panel, they decided to ask Parnas to set up meetings over the phone and Skype, Bondy told the news site.
Parnas then arranged the calls, which occurred in late March.
The House committee is spearheading the impeachment inquiry into the president and has interviewed a number of current and former diplomats and White House officials over the past two weeks.
Derek Harvey, a senior investigator for Nunes, represented the California Republican in the meetings, Bondy said.
Bondy said Parnas would tell lawmakers that the meeting held via Skype was with Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky.
The other took place over the phone with Konstantin Kulik, a deputy in Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office.
Both men have claimed they have information involving corruption by Democratic operatives in Ukraine during the 2016 election.
Bondy said Parnas began working with Harvey and Nunes after the congressman and his staff met with former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in Vienna last November.
Shokin alleges former Vice President Joe Biden pushed for him to be fired because he was investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company that included Biden’s son Hunter on its board.
Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, said he was working on behalf of the Obama administration and several European countries that believed that Shokin wasn’t aggressive enough in pursuing corruption in the country.
Nunes has threatened to sue CNN, which first reported that Parnas would testify about the Vienna trip.
Bondy is representing Parnas in his federal case.
Parnas also worked with Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to dig up dirt on the Bidens.
Asked about the Vienna meeting on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Nunes said he couldn’t comment yet.
“I really want to answer all of these questions, and I promise you I absolutely will come back on the show,” he told host Maria Bartiromo. “But I think you can understand that I can’t compete by trying to debate this out with the public media when 90 percent of the media are totally corrupt.”
