OPINION:
Lev Parnas, convicted fraudster and renegade associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani, has emerged from the criminal justice shadows as a key Democratic Party source to fight off President Biden’s impeachment and put a Russian face on Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop.
The problem is that Mr. Parnas, as the Biden family’s savior, is not believable.
At one time, the Ukrainian-born Mr. Parnas was in the thick of Donald Trump’s network as Mr. Giuliani’s investigator on Biden family corruption.
The chronology: Then-Vice President Joe Biden became the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine in 2014. Almost immediately, son Hunter popped up with a $1 million-a-year spot on the board of Ukraine’s largest natural gas conglomerate, Burisma, owned by a Russian ally, Mykola Zlochevsky. The vice president pressed Ukraine to fire the state prosecutor, or he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid. Ukraine fired the prosecutor in 2016.
All of this was fine with the liberal media and Democrats. The House impeached then-President Donald Trump for a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He requested an investigation into the sudden Biden largesse in a country where the vice president was supposed to be cleaning up corruption, not overseeing rank American cronyism.
Mr. Parnas’ world then fell apart. The feds indicted him and won a conviction for disguising a Russian’s foreign money as campaign contributions. Separately, Mr. Parnas pleaded guilty to defrauding investors, taking their $2 million and spending it on himself. In 2022, a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced him to 20 months in prison.
The next time the public sees Mr. Parnas, he undergoes an astounding transformation from a Giuliani investigator to a Biden family loyalist.
He appeared as a Democratic witness in March at a House impeachment hearing on President Biden and declared: “The American people have been lied to, by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions. They created falsehoods to serve their own interests, knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat, has touted a transcript of Mr. Parnas’ interview with Mr. Zlochevsky, which ended up in the evidence basket for the Democrats’ January 2020 impeachment of Mr. Trump.
Here is the key exchange, according to Mr. Parnas’ transcript.
“9.) Please detail any contacts you had with VP Joe Biden and his office from 2013 through 2019. Did Hunter ever facilitate any of those contacts?“
“NO ONE FROM BURISMA EVER HAD ANY CONTACTS WITH VP BIDEN OR PEOPLE WORKING FOR HIM DURING HUNTER BIDEN’S ENGAGEMENT.”
This we know today is a complete falsehood via Mr. Parnas, supposedly from Mr. Zlochevsky, who remains in hiding today.
What the Trump impeachment committee lacked in early 2020 was the Hunter Biden laptop, whose contents spilled onto the pages of the New York Post that October, providing an incredible look at how the Biden family collects foreign cash.
Mr. Zlochevsky’s right-hand man at Burisma — you might call him the fixer — was Vadym Pozharsky.
In 2015, Mr. Pozharsky traveled to Washington. And with whom did he meet? None other than then Vice President Biden. Mr. Zlochevsky, if Mr. Parnas quoted him correctly, either didn’t know what his executive was up to on such a crucial topic, or he was lying.
We know Mr. Pozharsky dined with Joe Biden because the next day, he sent a laptop-disclosed email to Hunter thanking him.
“Dear Hunter,” Mr. Pozharsky wrote April 17, 2015. “Thank you for inviting me to D.C. and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spend some time together. It’s really an honor and pleasure.”
Further evidence: Devon Archer, Hunter’s former investment partner and a co-Burisma board member at $1 million a year, testified he attended the Biden-Pozharsky dinner in Washington. Mr. Archer depicted Joe Biden as “the brand” around whom Hunter collected foreign money.
The real scandal went beyond a dinner. Mr. Pozharsky contacted Hunter on May 12, 2014, as he took his board seat and explained his mission: Use your “influence” to persuade Ukrainian officials to stop investigating Burisma.
“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” Mr. Pozharsky wrote in an email.
Is it any clearer why Hunter got the lucrative post? Is it any clearer that’s just what his father did? Got the local prosecutor fired. We know the elder Biden is a liar. For example, he has repeatedly said that he had never discussed Hunter’s business with Hunter. On the Biden whopper scale, that’s a 10.
Mr. Parnas offered another gem to help the Bidens, this time trying to bolster Hunter’s and the Democrats’ and former Obama intelligence chiefs who say the Russians hacked the laptop.
There is no real evidence of this.
Mr. Parnas’ tale ended up in a Hunter Biden court filing in May in Delaware, where the Justice Department prosecuted him on three felony gun charges.
Prosecutors said they planned to present the laptop’s hard drive contents as evidence. Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, objected by telling Lev Parnas’ story.
Mr. Parnas says a Russian businessman, Vitaly Pruss, “disclosed that Mr. Biden’s personal devices were compromised by FSB assets (Russia’s Federal Security Service) during a trip Mr. Biden took to Kazakhstan in 2014,” the Lowell filing said. Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was aware of this and planned to fetch a copy in Vienna, the filing says.
The Pruss story, Mr. Lowell said, was told well before computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac turned the original hard drive over to the FBI in December 2019.
The Justice Department scoffed.
“This is yet another example of the defendant asking people to believe Russian intelligence when it suits his interests but not to believe Russian intelligence when it doesn’t suit his interests. None of this hearsay on hearsay is evidence,” said a filing by special counsel David C. Weiss and his deputy, Derek E. Hines.
FBI forensics determined the original Mac Isaac-delivered hard drive in December 2019 was not hacked or fabricated. Hunter Biden has had the same data since 2023 and has yet to point out any fake messages.
“The defendant’s laptop is real … and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” Mr. Weiss and Mr. Hines said. It was presented as evidence at Hunter Biden’s gun trial.
On his two supposed pro-Biden bombshells, admitted fraudster Lev Parnas is batting zero.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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