New Evidence Shows a Nunes Aide in Close Conversation With Parnas

By Catherine Kim, Vox

18 January 20

Rep. Devin Nunes denies involvement in the Ukrainian scandal. New texts between his top aide and Lev Parnas say otherwise.

he House Intelligence Committee released a new trove of evidence on Friday that appears to show extensive contact between the top aide for House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Lev Parnas, a former Rudy Giuliani ally and a key figure in the Ukraine scandal.

Following his arrest on campaign finance violation charges, Parnas began providing the committee with a body of notes, photographs, and cellphone data as part of President Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings. These documents have been made public in tranches; earlier releases further defined Giuliani’s role in the push for a Ukrainian investigation into Joe Biden, and included messages that seemed to suggest a Republican congressional candidate had former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch under surveillance.

In recent days, Parnas has mounted a concerted push to shed light on outstanding questions related to the president’s pressure campaign — which sought to trade first a White House meeting, and later critical military aid for an investigation into Biden, his son Hunter, and the Democratic Party. Wednesday, he appeared on MSNBC to claim Trump knew “exactly what was going on” with respect to Giuliani’s efforts to advance a Biden investigation, and claiming that Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General William Barr were involved as well.

Parnas claimed last November that Nunes was also party to the pressure campaign, and that he’d worked with one of the lawmaker’s top aides, former White House official Derek Harvey, to keep the congressman in the loop about the progress of the quid pro quo scheme.

The messages released Friday would seem to support these allegations, and to suggest Nunes, who was a vocal defender of Trump throughout last year’s impeachment inquiry hearings, may have been more involved in the administration’s efforts in Ukraine than he’s admitted to — despite his consistent denials about having any real role in the scandal.

Messages between Harvey and Nunes show meetings at a Trump hotel, and coordination on witness interviews

A string of messages between Parnas and Harvey from April 17 to 19, 2019 show the two men trying to set up interviews with Ukrainian officials such as disgraced former prosecutor Viktor Shokin, a Biden critic who was fired at the request of a number of Western governments, and Yuri Lutsenko, who asked for Yovanovitch to be fired in exchange for dirt on the Bidens, according to recent documents released by the House Intelligence Committee.

Harvey and Parnas worked closely on the logistics of the interviews: after informing Parnas about prepping a Nunes staff lawyer, Harvey asks for “suggested lines of questions” and the “full names of who we will interview.” Parnas responds that he will put both together.

After two days, however, Harvey puts a halt on the interview process and says they would be “best served by sending the official letter and receiving documentation before any more interviews.”

A number of letters were eventually sent to Ukrainian officials, including a letter Giuliani sent to then President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky in May in which he requested a meeting. By the time that letter was sent, Giuliani had begun to publicly state he planned to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine.

In addition to the coordination with the interviews, the messages also appear to show Harvey meeting Parnas at the Trump hotel in Washington, DC, and taking part in private meetings with Giuliani and conservative journalist John Solomon, whose work (some of it based on recanted information) helped convince Trump of the veracity of conspiracy theories featuring Ukraine, Democrats, and Joe Biden. Parnas claimed last year that Harvey took part in these meetings, and the messages do seem to place him there.

Nunes’s aide also passed along the lawmaker’s contact information to Parnas on April 10 — two days before House records show that the two talked for eight minutes on the phone, according to NBC News.

All of this aligns with what Parnas has said so far: he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night that he had met Nunes several times and that the congressman worked with Harvey to dig up dirt on Biden. He also said he was surprised to see Nunes as a leader in the impeachment inquiry because “he knew very well that he knew what was going on.”

Nunes, who had denied any knowledge about his phone call with Parnas, appeared on Fox News on Thursday to say that he now remembers having and “odd” and “random” phone call with Parnas, according to The Daily Beast. He’d initially claimed he hadn’t spoken to Parnas, then that he’d actually talked with the fixer’s wife.

Overall, however, Nunes still denies working with Parnas for Trump’s political gain.

This, however, is a position he might not be able to maintain for much longer, especially if Parnas becomes more vocal as the impeachment process approaches its conclusion. The close associate of Giuliani was essential in connecting US officials with Ukrainian sources, and thus has a lot to tell.

It is true that Parnas’s credibility is somewhat in question, but he has been able to produce evidence that seems to support his version of events. And given his indictment, he has reason to cooperate with officials in order to demonstrate that regardless of his guilt or innocence in that case, that he is someone who now operates with the truth and public good in mind.

These new texts make it harder for Nunes to deny his involvement in the Ukraine scandal — but he’s still trying

Despite increasing evidence to the contrary, Nunes, still denies having any contact with Ukrainian officials or working to dig up dirt on Trump’s political rivals. To make his point clear, he even sued CNN for $435 million for publishing a story that he met with Shokin in search of damaging information on Biden — a report he described as a “demonstrably false hit piece.” For his part, Parnas has claimed Nunes met with Shokin in Vienna in December 2018.

Last December, Nunes threatened to sue fellow congressman Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), who alleged that Nunes was working with Parnas on Ukrainian matters. Nunes threatened the suit stating that he had an “‘absolute’ right to an unimpaired reputation.”

Lieu posted the threat from Nunes along with his own response dated Thursday: “It is true that I stated Congressman Nunes worked with Lev Parnas and conspired to undermine our own government.”

Attached is the first page of a five page letter in which the lawyer for @DevinNunes threatens that Rep Nunes will sue me.

Attached is my response. pic.twitter.com/bWAqdRhq97

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 17, 2020

“I welcome any lawsuit from your client and look forward to taking discovery of Congressman Nunes,” Liu continued. “Or, you can take your letter and shove it.”

Lieu pointed to Parnas’s interview with Maddow as proof of Giuliani’s former associate’s relationship with Nunes. Parnas told Maddow Wednesday night that he was shocked to see Nunes deny Trump’s efforts to dig up dirt on his political rivals in Ukraine because he was “involved in getting all this stuff on Biden,” according to MSNBC.

“[I]t’s hard to see them lie like that,” Parnas said, speaking of Nunes’s work in the impeachment inquiry hearings. “It’s scary because, you know, he was sitting there and making all 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.”

Nunes has already faced one ethics investigation in recent years, and questions of his involvement in Trump’s Ukraine scheme could lead to another. Some of his colleagues, including Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, have called for officials to take a closer look at Parnas’s allegations.

Whether an investigation is launched remains to be seen, but Parnas has signaled he has no plans to stop talking about his ties to Nunes — and the release of Friday’s evidence will only complicate Nunes’s efforts to distance himself from the affair.

Friday’s release further defines Giuliani and Parnas’ relationship

Beyond the Parnas-Harvey communications, the new documents also contain messages between Giuliani and Parnas that appear to affirm the closeness of their relationship — Parnas tells Giuliani in one exchange, “Just need to talk to you before I go to sleep my brother” — and that show Giuliani helping to connect Parnas to John Dowd, a former lawyer for the president.

Too, they contain a number of photos that attempt to link Parnas to both Giuliani and Trump; they include pictures of Giuliani golfing and riding a boat, as well as photos of Parnas with the president and with his son, Donald Trump, Jr.

President Trump has claimed in the past that he doesn’t know Parnas, and dismissed pictures of the two together as quick photo ops, saying on Thursday he poses with “thousands of people including today that I didn’t meet.”

“I don’t know who this man is,” Trump said. “Oftentimes I’ll be taking a picture with somebody and say, I wonder what newspaper that one will appear in. I don’t know him. Perhaps he’s a fine man. Perhaps he’s not. I know nothing about him.”

Parnas has argued the sheer number of photos he has with Trump — including of pictures of them sitting together at events — tells a different story. And he told CNN he has many pictures with the president he has yet to share, saying of Trump’s denials: “I welcome him to say that even more. Every time he says that I’ll show him another picture. He’s lying.”

Finally, the documents have raised new questions about Yovanovitch

The first tranche of documents revealed a Republican congressional candidate named Robert Hyde was in contact with Parnas about former US ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Hyde told Parnas he’d placed Yovanovitch — who was told she was recalled from Ukraine for her “security” — under surveillance.

Screenshots from WhatsApp conversations Hyde had with an individual with a Belgian phone number included in the latest release have shed a bit more light on those claims.

NBC has identified that individual as Anthony de Caluwe, based on the digits visible in their phone number, their WhatsApp profile picture, and conversations with Hyde. Hyde has also claimed on Twitter the Belgian number belongs to de Caluwe. De Caluwe told NBC Hyde contacted him, but that he refused to help him.

The screenshots show a conversation that mirrors messages released earlier in the week that suggest not only that Hyde had Yovanovitch under surveillance, but that those who were watching her had the capacity to do her bodily harm. It would appear that Hyde copied and pasted some of the messages he received from the Belgian number in his conversation with Parnas, including two that read “It’s confirmed we have a person inside” and “Hey broski tell me what we are doing what’s the next step.”

These would seem to suggest that Hyde — or his associate with the Belgian number — had some sort of asset within the US embassy, and that this surveillance was being guided by Parnas or Giuliani.

Parnas has said he did not direct any sort of surveillance operation — and the records released so far show that he did not respond to these messages. He has also said he believed Hyde to be bluffing about the surveillance, calling him a “a weird individual” who is constantly drunk.

Hyde has pushed back against the messages as well, claiming he was “absolutely not” threatening Yovanovitch. In a Twitter video Friday, Hyde called the messages “just copy and paste bullshit from some intel guy — probably that was fucking with me.”

Nevertheless, Ukrainian officials have opened an investigation into the matter, and Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would also investigate the matter.

Keeping Homeless Families Homeless, by Force

By Indigo Oliver, Jacobin

18 January 20

When our housing system’s primary function is to enrich capitalists rather than provide for humans’ basic needs, it’s no surprise that developers would rather deploy a small army complete with guns, a battering ram, and a tank to remove homeless families from an empty home, as they did earlier this week in Oakland, California.

n the morning of January 14, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office sent a small army to 2928 Magnolia Street in Oakland, California. With the house flanked by police dressed in military fatigues and an armored vehicle standing nearby, the sheriff’s men arrested two mothers after breaking the door down with a battering ram in a pre-dawn raid.

The two women are part of a collective of unhoused and marginally housed mothers called Moms 4 Housing. They, and two other mothers, had been occupying the vacant house with their children since November, though the property has remained empty for years. More than just a way to take shelter, the mothers’ residency in the empty home was a protest against the larger housing crisis that has gripped Oakland, which has some of the fastest rising rents of any city in the United States.

The home was bought in a foreclosure auction by Wedgewood Inc., a real estate investment firm that boasts of being the country’s largest “fix and flip” company. Hundreds of people had gathered the previous night after being alerted that the sheriff’s department was on their way to enforce the eviction notice.

Oakland has experienced some of California’s most rapid gentrification in recent years. The enormous influx of tech profits from neighboring Silicon Valley coupled with decades of segregation, disinvestment, and redlining have created a perfect storm to displace working-class families, particularly in majority-black communities. In Alameda County, where this showdown occurred, an $89,600 salary for a family of four is considered “low-income.”

Black communities have historically been shut out of homeownership, which contributes significantly to generational wealth or lack thereof. Decades of housing discrimination, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes, were followed by “a long period of predatory inclusion.” In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, black homeowners were twice as likely to be given a subprime loan. “This historic collapse in black homeownership is an important part of why the wealth gap between black and white Americans is larger today than it has been in decades,” says Taylor.

In cities like Oakland, those foreclosed homes have created an opening for a multibillion-dollar market to emerge. Developers use houses as an investment vehicle, distributed on a large scale with the goal of making a profit — driving up rents in the process.

Wedgewood, which ended up with 2928 Magnolia in its portfolio, buys some 250 foreclosed homes a month. According to their website, the company “was built on the flip business and since 2009 has been actively engaged in the nonperforming loan market.” The company has also been accused of wrongfully evicting tenants on three separate occasions. After filing a “right to possession” in court on the basis that housing is a human right, Dominique Walker, one of the mothers arrested Tuesday, had her claim denied.

Among the demands coming from Moms 4 Housing was to resell the property to the Oakland Community Land Trust (OakCLT) at the price Wedgewood purchased it for, half a million dollars, to ensure that the house remains permanently affordable. Community land trusts as a form of common stewardship over land emerged during the Civil Rights Movement in the rural South. OakCLT provides “community ownership of land and resident control of housing” in order to remove property from the speculative market.

Oakland, once considered “undesirable” in the Bay Area, has become a relatively new frontier for developers and tech workers alike to settle. As a result, the city has seen its black residents pushed out: between 2001 to 2011 the black population dropped by 25 percent. But in a city where empty houses outnumber the homeless four-to-one, these property arrangements can only be maintained through force.

Two days after the raid, Misty Cross, one of the moms arrested, recounted the experience on Democracy Now!:

Once the sheriffs actually made their way through the door to get in a little bit, they sent in a robot that came in to roam around the home to see if there was any explosives or weapons of some form. I later found out that the tank that they had outside [had] a detection on it that can shoot people and detect weapons on site, just by like a metal detector. So it would shoot at anything that had some form of weapon on them. I just still am like traumatized from it.

Private companies like Wedgewood, who have a legally enforceable deed to empty properties, have no obligation to enter into negotiations with these mothers — they can simply call the county to send a small battalion of heavily armed officers.

A movement demanding a right to housing has emerged recently. Elected officials like Rep. Ilhan Omar have begun to take that demand up. We’ll need much more of such organizing. Otherwise, the kind of asymmetrical warfare that we saw at 2928 Magnolia against people whose only crime is needing housing will only grow.