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.
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.”
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.
In approximately 5 billion years, the sun will begin the helium-burning process, turning into a red giant star.
The Republicans will keep pretending way after that.
Courtesy of Johnny Mathis: “Until the twelfth of never, and that’s a long, long time.”
How rich would Mandy Rice-Davies have been if she’d been able to trademark that line?
OT: from the interesting, yet not surprising files (courtesy of TMZ):
The Jeffrey Epstein story just gets more and more suspicious, because now … surveillance video from his failed suicide attempt has mysteriously vanished.
Prosecutors revealed in court Wednesday they could not locate the footage from outside of Epstein’s cell on July 23 – the day of his first reported suicide attempt at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in NYC. That was 2 weeks before he successfully killed himself … according to the Medical Examiner’s report.
The feds had no explanation for why the footage has gone missing – they said they simply can’t find it.
That could spell trouble for Epstein’s cellmate at the time, ex-cop Nick Tartaglione … who was reportedly accused of attacking Epstein that night. He formally requested the video be preserved 2 days after the suicide attempt … in order to clear his name.
Now, it doesn’t appear there’s much evidence to prove one account over the other – Epstein reportedly said Tartaglione attacked him, but he says he tried to save Epstein.
Of course, this all comes amid the highly-scrutinized eventual suicide – which is now the subject of a criminal probe. Two prison guards on duty the night Epstein died have been accused of falsifying records – making it seem like they’d made the required checks on Epstein’s cell that night when they really hadn’t.
Those guards have pled not guilty .
As for the missing surveillance video – the judge told prosecutors to look further into what happened to it.
I suppose they could swallow their professional pride and ask the Brits, or the French, or the Israelis (at the very least) for a copy of their transcripts…