More Evidence Of Trump/ Giuliani's Ukraine "Drug Deal" Emerges

Yesterday's release of documents provided to the House Intelligence Committee by Lev Parnas provided the strongest confirmation yet that the safari(s) to Ukraine by Trump consigliere Rudy "You Have a Fool For a Lawyer" Giuliani were specifically to 1) get Ukraine to announce an "investigation" of the Bidens for Trump's political advantage, in exchange for releasing military aid, 2) that Trump specifically authorized this "drug deal", and 3) that an associate/ stooge of Giuliani's named Robert Hyde told Parnas he had corruption- fighting U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich under surveillance:

New materials released by House Democrats appear to show Ukraine’s top prosecutor offering an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

The text messages and documents provided to Congress by former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas also show that before the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was removed from her post, a Parnas associate now running for Congress sent menacing text messages suggesting that he had Yovanovitch under surveillance in Ukraine. A lawyer for Yovanovitch said Tuesday that the episode should be investigated.  [snip]

Among the revelations in the documents released Tuesday: a message from Giuliani to Parnas saying he had involved a person he called “no 1” — possibly Trump himself — in an effort to lift a U.S. visa ban on a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was planning to come to the United States to make claims about Biden.

The materials also include a letter Giuliani wrote to Ukraine’s then-president-elect, Volodymyr Zelensky, requesting a May 14 meeting with the new leader in Giuliani’s “capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent.” Giuliani scrapped his planned trip, and the meeting never took place.

Here's the letter from Giuliani to President- elect Zelinsky presenting himself  as operating with Trump's "knowledge and consent" in the next to last paragraph (click to enlarge):



Here are notes on Ritz-Carlton Vienna stationary written by Parnas and other documents detailing some of the quid pro quos that were underway.

Here's a little background on the aforementioned "menacing" Mr. Hyde (no relation to Dr. Jekyll, although he does seem to have some emotional issues).

Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer write on the importance of the documents to the upcoming impeachment trial:

... These new documents demolish at least three key defenses to which Trump and his allies have been clinging: that he was really fighting corruption when he pressured Ukraine on matters related to the Biden family; that Hunter Biden should be called as a witness at the Senate impeachment trial; and that there’s no need for a real, honest-to-goodness trial in the Senate.

Let's once again thank Speaker Pelosi for delaying sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, allowing for this additional damning evidence to become public at a crucial time.