From Russia with Lev (2024) Movie Script

1
I was a nursing student and going to Cal
State of LA and, you know, hanging out and
doing what most 20, 21-year-olds do,
and I was dragged to this club,
and there was left-partness.
Gold chain, and his cardiac glasses,
and his Christian out-to-jare,
gold-foiled hoodie.
He said he was in LA to produce a movie.
The evening went by.
We were talking.
We were relating.
Me and Love are both immigrants from
Ukraine.
Similar background.
Similar upbringing.
The foundation.
It's still the Soviet Union.
The next day, he shows up in a stretch limo
in front of my house to pick me up for lunch.
It's just a certain way that
they produce people out of
Russian and Ukraine that's
different than anywhere else.
He proposed four days later, and we were
married within six months.
All of our friends and family thought we
were completely off our rockers.
It was like, nobody matters.
Nothing you say can stop us.
Like, that's it.
It's like Beyonce and Jay-Z, Bonnie and
Clyde.
Like, let's do this.
We're going to conquer the world.
I don't think you could
have convinced me with
anything that this is
where we would be in 2024.
Love-parnissed.
Love-parnissed.
Love-parnissed.
Love-parnissed.
Love -parnissed.
Parnissed.
The shady and indicted Ukrainian
businessman, Love-parnissed.
That he would be involved in one of the
biggest scandals.
President Trump pressured the head of Ukraine
to pursue an investigation into Joe Biden.
My call was perfect.
Having to do with our birth country,
Ukraine.
Having to deal with presidents of Ukraine
and of the United States.
Parniss is a recently indicted goon who
worked with Giuliani to help Trump
blackmail Ukraine into investigating Joe
Biden.
The impeachment of President Donald Trump
is here.
Love-parnissed.
He is now talking and he has documents to
back up his words.
Parniss implicated several
top Trump administration
officials, including
the president himself.
Were you relying on Love-parniss to get
rid of your ambassador?
I mean, who does that?
What happened?
What happened?
Love happened.
Democrats are really
scraping the bottom of the barrel
if they think that Love
-parniss is their star witness.
Love-parnissed.
He is a creepy, sleazy, self-serving,
super-snitch.
He will do and say anything he can.
I think I'm crazy, but I really thought
I'm going to get the Medal of Honor.
Boy, was I wrong.
That was born in Odessa Ukraine,
February 6, 1972.
My father used to own underground
factories.
During communism, you weren't allowed to
have your own business.
People that were caught running these type
of factories would get the death sentence.
We immigrated to the United States in 1976
when I was four years old.
We had friends and family that were all
immigrating to a little town.
Right by Coney Island, it was Brighton
Beach, and we called it Little Odessa.
It was kind of like one big family.
We all came from the same persecution,
and we all wanted the same thing,
which was the American dream.
Certain individuals started leading and
taking control of the neighborhood.
People, like my father, that were
businessmen in the Soviet Union,
what you now call Russian organized crime.
When my father passed
away and I was 11 years
old, I had to get more
involved into that world.
While other kids were going to school,
I was on the streets hustling.
And the girl I was dating,
her uncle, happened to
be one of the leaders in
that organized crime group.
And I ended up working for him as a
runner, collecting money.
So one day, I'm in South New Jersey,
and I'm collecting.
I've had somewhere around two and a half,
three million dollars in cash and checks,
sitting in the back of my Lincoln Town
car.
And an 18-wheeler hits me and drives over
the back of my car.
So I remember calling my uncle and telling
him, I'm stuck and the cops are on their way.
What do I do with their leg?
Whatever you do, don't open the trunk.
We're on our way.
At the end of the night, there was a bunch
of fun and laughs that Atlantic City could
see, discussing how I almost got arrested
with two and a half million in cash.
Then around 1989, there was a big boom in
the Russian community.
The Cold War might be over, and there
might be a lot of opportunity.
So now fast forward.
I've made some really good money over the
next several years in Russia, import, export.
I probably had every most powerful
Russian, Ukrainian, ex-Soviet Union,
businessman, mobster there to do business.
At some point, it became too crazy.
People were dying left and right,
and I saw it was my time to exit.
One day, I decided to give my cousin Oleg
a call.
Come on by, let's grab some sushi.
I wanted to impress him.
So here Oleg is pulling up in this red
Ferrari, gets out in a pinstripe suit,
looking like a million bucks, and I look
at him, I say, who did you kill?
He goes, nah, it's called Wall Street.
If anybody's seen the movie, The Wolf of
Wall Street, that didn't do it justice.
My first day in the office, I see guys
doing lines on the table.
You got guys smoking weed in the corner.
There's just a bunch of
young guys running around
with headphones and
screaming crazy numbers.
That was my initiation into Wall Street.
These were largely boiler rooms.
They were low-level brokerage houses, not
very well-known, and love was on the hustle.
Three of the brokerage
houses that he worked
for had been expelled
for violations of fraud.
All of a sudden, everybody
started getting arrested, and
the news started coming up
with the mob on Wall Street.
You know, it's time to exit.
My cousin, Oleg, was opening another
office in Boca Raton, Florida,
and he was looking for people to work
there.
Boca Raton, Florida, here we come.
The palm trees, the oceans, the warm sunny
weather, it was a paradise.
But it was also an
opportunity for every fraudster
in the world, because
you had a lot of retirees.
I ended up working for the
same mobbed up, penny stock
mobsters, doing the same
shit we were doing in New York.
In Boca Raton, he had multiple cases,
non-payment of dots, and being evicted
from various places where he lived, he had
been the target of at least nine court cases.
2008, the Great Recession hits,
and my life goes upside down.
I lose my wife, I lose my cars,
I lose my business.
And I kind of started looking for a new
path in life.
I got approached by one of
my friends and said, would you
be willing to open up some
poker rooms in Beverly Hills?
Next thing you know, here I am, running illegal
poker games on top of Road Day of Drive.
Our clientele was the who's who,
if you ever seen Molly's game?
Movie stars, directors, and business
titans.
They were going all in, all the time.
Thank you, Molly.
This is for you.
And that's it, and that was us.
At the same time, I was introduced to this
Hollywood producer, Rudy Duran.
He discovered Brook Shield,
saying it was Jack Nicholson's
good friend, and he had the
script that he was dying to do.
The main characters were supposed to be
Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg.
Now, here I am, running at night poker
games, and during the day, running around
would sell the most powerful
people in Hollywood, trying
to put together a movie
called Memory of Assassin.
I had no idea about the movie
business, but I was a salesman,
and I ended up going out
there and finding investors.
He's always been someone that is doing a
lot at the same time.
Serial entrepreneur?
Yeah.
For sure.
Serial father, too.
Love is a super likable guy.
You know, I mean him, he makes a joke,
and I'm like, oh, I love you.
You're so crazy.
Love is kind of a lovable character.
He is charismatic.
He's full of energy, full of pissing
vinegar.
You can't forget love.
I've never met anyone that has not
recalled meeting love.
While living the life of Adam,
I met a very special person.
A little guy know that this person would
end up being the love of my life.
Excuse me.
Oh, that's it.
Four days later, I dropped to one knee at
four o'clock in the morning, and I
proposed her with the jar of pickles,
and she said, yes.
I was going to be wife number three,
but baby mama number four.
And it was like, okay, enough,
you have kids.
All of the kids are in Florida.
So for me, it was immediately I have to
move.
I became an instant mom.
I was a young woman.
But then once you have three kids
instantly, you get really old really quickly.
The movie deal fell apart back then in
It would eventually be made later on
without me with Liam Neeson called memory.
We all have to die.
That's important.
That's what you do before you go.
I got retained December of 2017.
You go after a character named left Parnas
about a judgment.
Tonya Andre.
Tonya Andre is a Miami lawyer.
Great guy, but he was the root of all my
problems.
And he was retained by a gentleman called
Michael Puse.
He was an investor in the movie deal that
I was doing with Rudy Durant.
Mr. Puse lent money from the trust that
took care of his elderly mother.
Seven years later, he still out his 350
grand.
Which is now $500,000 if you can't post
judgment interest.
He was like a real pit bull.
Once he got subpoena power through the
judgment, my life turned into a living hell.
On paper, left look like terrible
collection.
All the earmarks of a bum case.
I think the column at typical Miami
hustler would do the game with this service.
Now to the race for the White House and
after decades of very publicly slirting
with the idea, billionaire
Donald Trump says he
really is running for
president this time around.
Watching him come out going down those
golden escalators.
They're bringing drugs.
They're bringing crime.
They're rapists.
I mean, I never voted.
I had nothing to do with politics.
I was never registered.
But he wasn't a politician.
He was a New York hustler.
And we could relate.
I'm working with a big real estate
company.
We were out in a restaurant.
Robert Pereira, I met for the first time
that evening.
He was a very, very wealthy businessman
and also a powerful person in the
Republican party.
And they had ties close to Trump.
At first, I was extremely excited to meet
this guy because of my real estate project.
So that night we come
up with this crazy idea is
we're going to hold a huge
fundraiser Robert's house.
This is the La Palas.
I mean, it's a $140 million house with
golden chandeliers, golden doors.
So while Robert is basically figuring out
how we're going to raise this money for
Donald Trump, I'm more excited about how
I'm going to have 20 Robert Pereira's in
the same room where I could pitch my real
estate deal to.
Until all of a sudden, it's breaking news.
Trump taped bombshell.
Donald Trump caught on a hot mic months
after marrying Melania, making vulgar
comments about groping women, saying when
you're a star, they let you do it.
It's a shit show.
People are canceling left to right.
We were able to salvage it.
And that was my very first donation,
$50,000 to the Donald Trump campaign.
But something happened that night.
We were like two seats away from Trump and
Lev piped in and said something.
And instantly, it was like no one else was
in the room.
And the two of them were just talking.
The moment that really got me is when I
asked him, I said, why are you doing this?
And he looked out onto the ocean and then
stared back at us and said, you know what?
I don't need to be doing this.
I'm doing this for the regular folk,
for the common people.
I'm trying to stop them from destroying
our country.
And at that moment, it was something that
hit me at that moment.
I was mesmerized, colonized, hypnotized.
I was Trump-enized.
For the month leading up to the 2016
election, we were Trump family.
It was a world where we were flying around
all over the place following Donald Trump.
It was a small group.
A tough time for any
Republican right now to be
standing up alongside
their party's standard bearer.
Nobody believed he could win.
Even we didn't believe he could win.
There was rallies and dinners and then
finally the debate in Vegas.
Putin, from everything I see, has no
respect for this person.
Well, that's because he'd rather have a
puppet as president in the United States.
No puppet.
No puppet.
It's pretty clear.
You're the puppet.
After that, Trump said I
want you guys with me
on election night at
the Hilton in New York.
It was such a roller coaster of a night,
all like sitting there nervous,
trying to pray our way to having Trump
win.
For Hillary Clinton, one of the most stunning
defeats in American political history.
Donald Trump will be the 45th president of
the United States.
I was like, our guy made it.
Finally, we're gonna get back on track.
Back to that, you know, make America great
again.
At the crazy party, I didn't vote,
but we still won.
I love this country.
Shortly after that, we found out that we
were invited to the inauguration.
It didn't take long for work to spread.
That was just like the Trump guy.
During this wild ride, I
started documenting taking
pictures of everything and
posting them on social media.
All of a sudden, I started getting phone
calls from everybody.
I knew I didn't know in the Russian
-Ukrainian community wanting to be my friend.
Everybody wanted to go to the
inauguration.
You're gonna do a great job to the people
in this country.
It was hilarious to see all these
characters from my previous life.
mafia, kingpins, oligarchs,
hugging, sitting, VIP, and
interacting with all these Republican
congressmen and senators.
It was very interesting for me always not
only watching the way Lev was interacting,
but the way everyone kind of accepts Lev.
You wouldn't really come up to Trump and
say, hey, my brother, how you doing?
Lev did.
In the year and a half, I went from not
knowing anything about what politics is,
to now being in the inner circle of the
president.
Lev was just in state of shock that he was
at this level.
This is a guy who's an immigrant and who
is living large, larger than he ever dreamed.
Donald John Trump do solemnly swear.
There are also plenty of congratulations
being extended to the president-elect,
including those of Vladimir Putin.
Putin said today he's ready to open a new
chapter with the U.S.
I would have a very, very good
relationship with Putin and with Russia.
Washington Post is reporting that
President Trump revealed highly classified
information to the Russian
foreign minister and
ambassador during a meeting
in the Oval Office last week.
The White House blindsided tonight as the
Department of Justice reveals that they
will appoint a special
counsel to now oversee the FBI
investigation into Russian
meddling in any possible collusion.
And then they launched the Robert Mueller
investigation.
The man now leading the investigation,
former FBI director Robert Mueller.
They're weaponizing
the DOJ to go after Donald
Trump because they
can't stand that he won.
U.S.
officials believe Russia not
only tried to influence the election,
but also worked to help Donald
Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
Over a month before the election,
U.S.
intelligence agencies accused the Russian
government of hacking emails from the
Democratic National Committee and Hillary
Clinton's campaign.
My people, they said, they think it's
Russia.
President Putin, he just said it's not
Russia.
I don't see any reason why it would be.
President Trump and those working with him
had scores of contacts with Russians and
WikiLeaks, including attempts at setting
up bad channels with the Kremlin.
I have nothing to do with Russia,
folks, okay?
The Russia cloud over the Trump White
House seems to be darkening.
Paul Manafort and a
deputy campaign official, Rick
Gates, will turn themselves
into face charges.
Well, towns, conspiracy
against the United
States, unregistered
agent of a foreign principle.
Paul Manafort was working for free as
Trump's campaign manager, but in reality,
he used to get paid by Russian and
Ukrainian oligarchs.
Paul Manafort, he was doing work in Ukraine
that was very definitely pro -Russian.
The entire thing has been a witch hunt.
This investigation is nothing more than a
witch hunt.
Five defendants have pleaded guilty.
It's only a witch hunt if you don't find
any witches.
There's a great effort and a part of the
Trump administration to turn the tide.
On collusion, they have nothing.
They have nothing.
It's somebody's version of the truth,
not the truth.
Truth isn't truth.
Giuliani takes this narrative and turns it
into Ukraine.
It wasn't Trump and the Russians,
they meddled in the 2016 election.
It was actually Hillary and the
Ukrainians.
It's Ukrainian collusion, which was large,
significant, and proven.
With Hillary Clinton, with the Democratic
National Committee.
The real collusion scandal,
as we've said several times
before, has everything to
do with the Clinton campaign.
So that's where I think the Mueller
team should be investigating,
which is the real crime,
which is the Clinton collusion.
All of a sudden, my old friend,
somebody that I haven't seen for a while,
Igor Fruman, comes back into my life.
Igor Fruman was a
Ukrainian-American citizen that had
lots of businesses
overseas, primarily in Ukraine.
He had restaurants, he had nightclubs.
One of them was called the mafia rave
club.
In Ukraine, Igor knew
everybody, from the low-level street
hustlers to the high -level
mobsters and politicians.
They all came to his clubs.
He made their dreams come true.
I didn't think he was the right person for
Lev to be as close as they became.
But, you know, they were.
They were friends.
Igor was a little bit more
mysterious than Lev, known
particularly for connections
in organized crime.
And he came to America with a significant
amount of money.
Igor didn't fit into Trump World until he
started paying for their bills.
Igor became everybody's best friend with
that American Express Black card.
So when Igor comes back in my life,
at first I didn't understand, but then I
realized that Igor has been looking
through my social media like everybody else.
And that's when he made his proposal.
There was a company in Ukraine,
an energy company that was up for sale,
but they wanted to be bought out by an
American company.
All of the people that really controlled oil
and gas industry were Republican mega donors.
So we started a company called Global
Energy Producers.
They had not spent a lot of time in that
energy sector, so I don't think they knew
a lot about it, but look, they were
salesmen.
Between the connections
he had in Ukraine and the
Republican Party, it's silly
not to put these two together.
Instead of going, getting fancy offices
and investing money into advertising,
we were going to become mega
donors to be able to have VIP
access to everything that
goes on in the Republican Party.
He was donating money left and right.
And I'm like, what are you doing?
We were donating to everybody who would
take our money.
We donated $100,000 to
Kevin McCartry and Vice
President Mike Pence
for Protect the House.
We donated thousands of dollars to Pete
Sessions.
We donated to Rick Scott's Senator
campaign.
We donated $50,000 to the Ron DeSantis
campaign for Florida Governor.
I'm the one that got him to govern a ship.
That was a matchmaker between Governor
DeSantis and Trump.
I mean, it was like to learn the roof.
Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.
The night he won, the first person he gave
a hug to was me.
And then we made our
commitment for a million dollars
to the pro-Trump Super
PAC, America First Action PAC.
And we wired $325,000 for our first
installment.
It was Igor's money.
And the money's going to various shell
companies that they formed, LLCs.
It's going to other business partners,
and then it's coming back to them again.
This was a real exercise in following the
money.
So we're invited to
our first intimate dinner
with Donald Trump to the
America First Super PAC.
And it was being held
at the Trump International
tell I was sitting face-to
-face with Donald Trump.
When Trump saw us, he
greeted us like he always
greeted us by saying,
my guys to me and Igor.
Igor secretly recorded the whole thing.
And all of a sudden, topic changes to
Ukraine.
Me being me, I got into the conversation.
How did Ukraine do?
Don't ask me.
They love you, though.
I realize that Trump has no idea about
Ukraine.
How long did Ukraine last in a fight with
Russia?
Not very long.
Without us, not very long.
He has no idea they have oil.
You can't have oil?
No.
No, but one in Euro.
Yeah, we could...
Yes.
So prior to us coming to the event,
I heard all these stories about what was
going on with the Ukrainian ambassador and
that how she was, you know, a Soros plant
and how she was part of the Clinton
regime.
The first thing that came out of my mouth
is I said...
The biggest problem there, I think,
is we got to get rid of the ambassador.
She's still left over from the Clinton
administration.
Where the ambassador?
Where Ukraine?
I'm repeating gossip.
I have no idea.
I have no facts, no vetting.
She's basically walking around telling
everybody, wait, he's going to get impeached.
He got angry all of a sudden, turned
around to one of his aides and said...
Get rid of her.
Okay?
Get around.
Take her out.
Okay?
It was silence.
The table looked at each other.
Nobody knew what to do.
Do it.
So we all start clapping.
Yeah.
Left shared a piece of silly gossip,
probably from somebody that was corrupt.
And because of that, she should be
immediately fired.
She's like, why?
It was putative.
It was terrible.
It was Trump.
I get some voicemail, you know,
from a reporter saying, left Parnas
through this entity named Global Energy
Producers, there was this, you know,
LLC that was started in April.
And in May, they gave 325,000 to America's
first action.
And I was like, that doesn't make any
sense.
This guy doesn't have two nickels rubbed
together.
You know, he's in the room with Trump.
Tony Andre comes in as a civil lawyer,
but through the subpoena power,
is able to get a lot of the transfers and
how the money bounced around.
To the various banks, which gets loud in
big trouble later.
It was like a freight train going off the
tracks.
And I could see that it's going off the
tracks.
And I was trying to explain to him he's
going off the tracks.
But he was like, if I go off the tracks,
then I go off the tracks.
Whatever, you know, effort.
My world changed.
I started associating myself and hanging out
with hardcore right-wing mega -republicans.
Trump International Hotel, it was like
home away from home.
Everybody knew my name.
Everybody knew my association with the
Trump family.
And it was kind of like feeling like I was
at my own hotel.
The managers, the hotel employees, everybody
knew to report back to Donald Trump.
He knew who the highest rollers were.
If you wanted any favor from Donald Trump,
you better stay at his hotel.
At least $7.8 million he received from 20
foreign governments.
It's about Trump Tower and Trump hotels.
Almost entirely.
That's where this money went.
Waking up at the Trump hotel would be like
waking up in the war zone with the
congressmen, senators, conspiracy
theories, Fox TV all over the place.
You're basically hotboxing, right-wing,
Fox News, Russian propaganda.
All day long.
Everybody believed in the same bullshit.
Everybody wanted to please Donald Trump.
But what nobody could
understand at the time was how
close Rudy Giuliani really
was with Donald Trump.
And their relationship goes way back.
You know, you're really beautiful.
Oh, you dirty boy!
Oh, oh, Donald, I thought you were a
gentleman.
You can't say I didn't try.
When I met Giuliani, he was going through
a divorce.
He was having financial difficulties.
I can certainly tell you, the person that
you see now is not the man that I married.
Giuliani's last hurrah was when he ran for
president during that debate when Joe
Biden basically embarrassed
Rudy in front of the world by
saying There's only three things
he mentioned in a sentence.
And now in the verb in 9-11, I mean,
there's nothing now.
Rudy could never forget that.
Yes, he was still Rudy Giuliani,
America's mayor.
But he wasn't in the limelight.
And that's what he really missed.
Rudy was hustling, being the unofficial
lobbyist, the unofficial ambassador.
People started giving him jets and private
airplanes and paying for dinners.
People started finding out that he was the
key to Trump's ear.
Rudy was basically working with anybody
that was willing to give him a dollar.
That's where I came in.
But we sat down to discuss Rudy being my
partner and my company called Fraud Guarantee.
He believed for him to do for us,
but he did to life-lock.
Identity is that you steal from everyone.
You have to protect yourself.
I protect myself with life-lock.
Who needs fraud guarantee?
I take fraud credit.
It was me.
Who better to start a company like that
than a lot of partners?
Looking back, you could see where the
irony is that now, you know, especially I
get convicted of fraud for fraud
guarantees, so yeah.
Fraud guarantee becomes a guaranteed
fraud.
Rudy was supposed to use his contacts to
promote the company.
Instead, he took half a million dollars
and accomplished nothing.
But in the beginning, I really looked up
to him and I really cared for Rudy Giuliani.
I'm here with my friends, Lev and Igor.
It was like a romance made in heaven.
At some point, almost overnight,
Rudy became Lev's, I don't know,
a work wife or something
because they spent so much time
together and they had
such an intimate relationship.
They were almost like father and son.
Four to five days out
of the week, four or five,
six times a day with phone
calls and text messages.
And he was the godfather to my son Nathan.
There's a picture of him wiping his mouth.
I don't think Lev has ever offered me that
service.
Maybe not even all of her kids.
After that, I was like, yep, we're not
getting him back, people.
Like...
This is an ABC News special report.
The death of President George Herbert
Walker Bush.
There was the hottest ticket in
Washington.
Dignitaries, billionaires from all over
the world were trying to get a ticket.
Rudy says that you guys want to go with
me.
I was like, hell yeah, we're going to go.
But Rudy wasn't just taking me and Igor,
but Rudy was also taking a date.
But not only the date, but her mother
also.
At the time, Rudy was drinking nonstop.
Right after he'd be
going right on TV and
representing the President
of the United States.
If I did one tenth of what Hillary Clinton
did, I'd be in jail.
She paid people to create violence at his
rallies.
She sold 20% of our uranium to Russia.
Poor little Hillary, we got to be nice
there.
There's something awful about Rudy
Giuliani.
How many of the former President's terrible
ideas came from an inebriated Rudy Giuliani?
But the funniest part is having to hear
the conversations through the speakerphone
of Trump ripping Rudy after going on TV
drunk.
Rudy always wanted to be Secretary of
State, but Trump didn't give him the
opportunity because he thought
he was low energy, because
he fell asleep in a meeting
and then on a plane ride.
So at a certain point in time,
you had the official Secretary of State
who was Secretary
Pompeo, and then you had the
shadowed Secretary of
State who was Rudy Giuliani.
This wasn't a normal presidency.
It was turning American foreign policy,
basically into an episode of The Apprentice.
Yes, I am.
The Mueller investigation, it's winding
down.
Giuliani is no longer looking back at the
2016 campaign.
Joe Biden, former Vice President for eight
years, now emerging as the number one
potential candidate now, to run against
Trump.
You are the Democrat's top choice to run
against President Trump in 2020.
President Trump says
that you're his dream
candidate would be his
dream to run against you.
He was the point man for the Obama
administration in Ukraine.
His son, Hunter, takes a job with Burisma,
a large energy company in Ukraine.
Trump's biggest nightmare
was Joe Biden, and
he did not want him to
run and be his opponent.
Let's go after Joe.
Let's go after Hunter, and let's find that
way through Ukraine.
Rudy was amazed to see how Igor and I were
aware about these intricacies that were
going on in Ukraine
between all of these corrupt
politicians and all the
guards and criminals.
So Rudy says he has an idea.
You guys are going to go Ukraine.
And when we said yes, he called Trump up,
the plan was hatched.
We were to go on our first
reconnaissance mission
on behalf of Donald
Trump from Rudy Giuliani.
It was almost like Levenigor landed in
Trump's lab.
They were Ukrainian, they were citizens,
they were businessmen, and they were
willing to do it on Trump's and Giuliani's
terms, 120%.
Rudy says that this has to be all
secretive.
This is very confidential.
To look that Igor said
you have a $20 bill, Rudy
took it and said, I'm
officially your lawyer now.
Rudy's tool of choice was the lawyer
-client privilege.
That would enable him, Trump, and
ourselves to communicate.
They get people that can work in the
shadows.
Not a Henry Kissinger, not a Phil Habib.
Not any of those folks.
Love and Igor.
No guardrails.
No oversight.
Nothing.
And that is how I was
recruited to start the secret
mission to dig up dirt
on Joe and Hunter Biden.
And this is where really the back-channel
campaign begins, and could that get them
in trouble with various laws in place that
weren't against that, of course.
But they didn't worry about that.
They had protection, they had the
president, they had Rudy Giuliani.
For the life of me, I can't
understand why they got
recruited to do anything
sensitive with Rudy Giuliani.
It makes no sense to me unless maybe
you're looking for a fall guy.
I don't think Hillary Clinton or any other
sane person would be entrusting Lev and
Igor with top secret government kind of
information.
And then having them run around Ukraine,
he's not qualified.
I mean, it's just... it's ridiculous.
With Trump, it was never about competency.
It was never about the Constitution.
It was always about loyalty.
It was always about protecting him.
It was always about doing things for him.
Like fear and loathing in Washington,
D.C.
As your attorney, I advise you to rent a
very fast car with no top.
There's this president talking to this
crazy cat, his lawyer, who's got these two
people that should not
even be in the room, that
are now participating
in a really high level.
But comedic as it was, it was also gravely
serious.
Wait!
We can't stop here!
This is bad country.
This was the beginning of the BLT team.
We would meet at the BLT Steakhouse
restaurant at the Trump International Hotel.
They had a private room there that I was
told by that junior.
It was swept once a week to make sure that
there was no listening devices there.
The BLT team was compiled of Rudy Giuliani,
who's the head, and it was me and Igor.
And then you had John Solomon,
who was the Hill reporter at the time.
Then you had Joe, DeGeneva,
and Victoria Tunzing, who
was two right-wing lawyers
that used to work for Trump.
They were key part in getting Bill Barr to
become Attorney General.
Victoria told them, don't worry about it.
Bill Barr is going to wipe away the
Mueller report, and that was it.
Bill Barr, one of the most
respected jurists in the country,
highly respected lawyer, a
terrific man, a terrific person.
He will be nominated for the United States
Attorney General.
So the BLT team had this big round table
with windows.
People couldn't see him the way you were
sitting down.
And Rudy was like Tom Corleone.
Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of New
York.
New York City is affected
by organized crime, more
so probably than any other
city in the United States.
I'd be right by his side as his soldier.
He's part of a criminal family.
He's, you know, he's the Tom Hagen.
I have a special practice.
I handle one client.
He is fascinated by the mob and constantly
talk about the Godfather.
Sounds like a poor imitation of the
Godfather.
Almost like, you know, the Godfather.
This is business.
You could see his love for that mob
lifestyle.
Everybody knew that I
was so close to the president
and Rudy Giuliani,
that I was a gatekeeper.
To be able to walk into a room and have
all of these powerful people, congressmen,
senators, bow down to you, run up to you,
kiss your ass.
It was amazing.
The power, the rush.
December, 2018, we were invited to the
White House Hanukkah Party.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Trump comes straight up to
me, shakes my hand, looks
me in the eye and says,
Rudy tells me great things.
Thank you for what you do.
And then his keep up to good work.
The president of the
United States is sending me
on the mission to be able
to save our democracy.
But a week later, we were in Ukraine.
I knew he was out of his league right from
the beginning.
I told him, listen.
You entered a good old boys club.
You don't belong there.
You do not have membership to this club.
At all.
You think you might.
But all you have is access.
And access is going to get denied.
The second there are done with you.
When he started traveling
to Ukraine and being on this
mission, I knew almost everything
he was doing was a bad idea.
I'd get home and tell her, you can't
believe what just happened.
And you can't believe who I was with.
She'd be like, what are you doing?
Every chance I had to tell him that he
thought of his mind, and instead of a
medal, he's going to get handcuffs because
he's going to be the fall guy.
This was a mission impossible.
A mission stupid.
I don't know which one, but maybe both.
See you in Ukraine soon.
We're in Ukraine.
There was a convoy of cars with a bunch of
people in there with guns.
We were driven first to one
house where we switched
cars I mean, this is
right out of a spy thriller.
It was in the middle of nowhere,
like a log cabin.
There was a Victor Shokin.
He was a elderly gentleman.
But this guy is not your typical
grandfather.
This guy is hardcore.
Victor Shokin was a very disreputable
former prosecutor.
There are various
allegations of corruption for this
country to get the kind of
help and aid that it needed.
Various funding agencies wanted them out.
Then Vice President Biden went over there
to get rid of this guy.
As I'm leaving it six hours.
If the prosecutor's not fired,
you're not getting the money.
That happened.
Shokin was let go.
Oh, son of a bitch.
You got fired.
Ukraine's embattled prosecutor general
Victor Shokin is no longer in office.
Victor Shokin's departure comes after the
country's president, Poroshenko,
publicly urged the general prosecutor to
resign.
By the time Lev Parnas gets the shokin,
he has a vendetta.
Shokin told us Joe Biden was involved in
the firing to protect his son,
Hunter Biden, who was a board member of a
Burisma corrupt, the Ukrainian energy company.
It's a huge bombshell.
It would cause Biden the nomination.
We fly down to New York.
We meet up with Rudy in Park Avenue.
He was very excited because Victor
Shokin's willing to play ball.
So Victor Shokin now needs to get a visa.
He then goes to the US embassy.
Then he gets rejected.
Rudy looks at me and says, don't worry
about that.
I'll take care of that.
He calls me on later that evening,
says he just met with Pompeo.
Everything is good.
Shokin goes back.
Then they take away his passport.
Shokin is obviously irate screaming to the
media and everything that the US
ambassador, Marie Vonnovich, blocked his
visa.
I said, Rudy, it's Marie Vonnovich again.
She's back at it.
Rudy loses it.
She's going to get involved in my
investigation.
I'll show her.
If he texts me, I'm calling number one.
That was Donald Trump.
Calls me back and tells me in two days,
everything's going to be alright.
If Shokin gets called into
the embassy where he gets a
strict letter saying that he
is put on a do not fly list now.
So the more pressure we
were putting on together, the
visa, the more they were
destroying Shokin over there.
He was flipping, losing it.
The President of the United States can't
even get a visa for somebody.
It was like the Baton Rouge Bears of
politics.
One thing about Marie
Vonnovich, she's not
going to do the back
room, you know, diplomacy.
She was a very disciplined and respected
civil servant.
They needed to get her out.
And we can't get a visa for a Shokin.
So we arranged a Skype call.
It was Rudy, myself, and Igor.
We were joined by XFPI agent that Rudy had
there to take notes.
And on the other side was Victor Shokin.
How long had he been conducting that
investigation that involved Biden's son?
Rudy said, was there anything illegal that
Hunter Biden or Joe Biden did?
Do they get a kickback?
Do they get a bribe?
And there's a two second pause and then
you hear...
No, but if I would be
able to investigate it, I'm
convinced that we would
have found something there.
Shokin did it previously investigated
Briezma.
There was no credible evidence at that
time to charge Briezma or Hunter Biden.
So for Shokin to then bring it up again,
it seemed ludicrous.
Tonight, we have more evidence of Ukraine
gas company Briezma leveraging Hunter
Biden for political access and more lies from
Joe Biden as he tries to cover up this story.
The bullshit pipeline worked like this.
Between five and seven in
the evenings, Rudy would text
what we have anything for
the president or John Solomon.
And get some information from Ukraine.
I'd send it over to John
Solomon and literally
within an hour or two
it'd be all over Fox News.
Joe, remember you heard it here first,
credible evidence about your son peddling
your influence as vice
president in exchange for
millions in one case and
billions in another case.
If some Ukrainian caught me up with some
crazy deer, like the sky is yellow,
Solomon would turn around
and say, yep, my source
has confirmed the sky is
yellow and the anonymity.
I can confirm to you tonight that the U.S.
government had open source intelligence
and was aware as early as February of 2019
that the Ukrainian government was planning
to reopen the Briezma investigation.
Part of my job was to make
sure that the information
we were getting was
coming from credible sources.
People that were in power in office and
had authority.
But there was lots of other
characters like oligarchs, street
guys, businessmen that were
all trying to get into the mix.
Most of those were actually GRU and
Russian agents.
They were just babbling all this Russian
disinformation.
Nobody would listen to it until Rudy
Giuliani.
I mean, Rudy did not
care as long as it fit his
narrative and the narrative
was Joe Biden is bad.
Having his son, who had just been tossed
out of the military for drug problems,
put on the board of the most corrupt
company in Ukraine.
They needed to help
feed the beast, get it out
there on the hill, get it
out there in Fox News.
Well, Joe Biden has spent weeks
deflecting the flood of questions
about his son's shady business
deals in Ukraine and China.
And then all of a sudden, Hunter Biden
resigns from the board, Lev and Igor,
they got a victory.
They're riding high.
It was good, but we needed more.
We didn't have the smoking gun.
Two days later, here comes a call, and it's
current general prosecutor Yuri Lutzenko.
Come on down.
You're the next contestant.
Yuri Lutzenko didn't have a great
reputation.
Like a lot of prosecutors, these are
largely political hacks.
They feed a certain faction that's in
power.
He came in with a pile of
paperwork that had to do
with Marisma, but he's not
showing any hardcore facts.
He never left any records,
nor was very specific
as to, okay, where
did the money come in?
How was it delivered?
How did Vice President Biden benefit?
Giuliani said we needed to announce an
investigation into the Bidens.
Lutzenko was willing
to get this investigation
announced, but he
needed something in return.
Yvonne Vich had to go, and that wasn't a
problem because Rudy wanted Yvonne Vich gone.
The problem is Trump already fired her.
Remember, when we had our dinner, he
said, get rid of her, and she's still there.
But he couldn't understand it.
He would just scream, she's fired,
and expect that's it.
He's gone.
Trump told Pompeo to fire her,
but Pompeo refused.
He even screamed so loud at his secretary
of Madeleine to fire, and she told him,
Mr. President, I don't have the authority
to do it.
A man that's known for firing people on TV,
and here he can't fire his own ambassador.
I mean, it was hilarious.
I don't know if I'm more offended as a
Ukrainian or as an American to see the
extents and lengths that President Trump
was willing to go.
It didn't make sense to me, and I think the
only person that made sense to was Trump.
It was just astonishing to see such high
levels of governments acting like children.
One of the things that I was fascinated to
find was that when global energy producers
did get bank accounts, I see charges of
Leves in Ukraine.
You know, he's living it up in Kiev.
While Leves is being chased by creditors
all through South Florida, he is now
orchestrating a stream of money with Igor
that goes through a foreign bank to the U .S.
The money is flowing, and he is spending
it with Igor with reckless abandon.
They flew for his class.
They stayed in top-level hotels.
They ate $1,000 dinners.
We're talking $600 at Tutsis, a strip club
in Kiev.
They were not only moving around Ukraine.
They were jet-setting around the globe.
Paris, Warsaw, London.
They were globe-trotting diplomats,
if you will.
And I use that for him loosely.
Here I am, a kid at Brooklyn going to meet
the president of Ukraine, a country that
was born in, relaying a message from the
most powerful man in the world.
It's time, game time.
I was scared every time he went to Ukraine
that he wouldn't come back.
Petro Poroshenko battling to hold on to
his presidency against Zelensky.
Elections were going on in Ukraine.
They tell Poroshenko.
If he would giveuzenko the go-ahead to
open an investigation into the Biden,
and if Poroshenko
himself would come out and
discuss the involvement
in the meddling of U.S.
Ambassador Maria Varnovich into Ukrainian
politics, in return, down Trump would then
not only have Poroshenko visit him at the
White House, but he would also come visit
him in Ukraine and support him in his
elections.
I made the very, very first quid pro quo
to the president of Poroshenko,
Ukraine from President down Trump.
After I'm done talking, Poroshenko sits
back, starts laughing and said,
hold on a second.
He goes, we're not going to do this again.
Thank you very much.
It's a great honor to be with President
Poroshenko.
He got screwed by Trump
on some shady cold deal,
and now he can't even
get a phone call back.
So, at this point, he didn't trust that
Trump would hold up his end of the deal.
John Solomon, Rudy,
everybody starts going crazy, and it
becomes an all-out war between
Yuri Lutenko and Rudy Giuliani.
Finally, after Rudy getting on the phone
and literally screaming at Lutenko and
cursing, Lutenko, he's going
to do the interview, and he's
going to give us a bombshell
that we're not even ready for.
This isn't a normal political exercise.
This is subterfuge on an entirely another
level.
You just don't see that.
Nowhere in American history.
You guys understand that.
I mean, I was at the studios.
I was at the control room.
Overseeing this interview, old Soviet style,
you know, propaganda, state TV type of shit.
Today we'll launch the criminal
investigation about this fact,
and we'll give legal assessment of all
this information.
Lutenko tells the Hill
we're doing an investigation,
and boom, that was
another victory for the team.
How real was the investigation?
No more real than a lot of the
investigations that happened there.
So let's be perfectly clear.
Trump already never cared if there was an
actual investigation.
Trump even himself said it several times
to announce it and leave the rest to me.
How do you gauge the relationship between
Ukraine and specifically our U.S.
ambassador, Ms. Ivanovich?
That's when Lutenko heads us with the
bomb.
Unfortunately, from the first meeting with
the U.S.
ambassador here, Ms. Ambassador gave me a
list of people who should not prosecute.
And all hell broke loose.
There was no proof of that.
And the State Department flatly denied
that and said it was a fabrication.
But you know, the end of the day the
damage was done.
We were on cloud nine high fives and having
dinner and drinks and thinking we did it.
We got it.
Mission accomplished.
Breaking news in the Russia
investigation, a summary
of the Mueller report has
been delivered to Congress.
Attorney General William Barr reported
that the special counsel found no evidence
that the Trump campaign, or anyone
associated with it, conspired or
coordinated with Russia to influence the
2016 presidential election.
This was all bullshit.
Worries among Mueller's
investigators that Barr may have
shaped the entire narrative
about the Russia investigation.
But it was party time at the Trump
International.
Music was going, congressmen, senators
were all over the place.
Finally, this Russian collusion is going
to bad.
We knew that Bill Barr was going to take
care of it.
After Mueller, you would
think at that point the
administration would be
breathing a collective sigh of relief.
No.
There wasn't any effort to kind of,
okay, let's play this straight.
Let's do it right.
No.
They're right back in the hunt.
Now let's target an ambassador.
It's been a dramatic day.
President Trump fired US ambassador Marie
Yovanovitch.
That morning I wake up from a phone call
to, from Lutenko and he's like,
congratulations.
Finally, you guys did something right.
Yovanovitch said she was never told why
she was removed.
By text Victoria Tunzing and she said the
wicked witch is gone.
I'm like, you know, from the Wizard of Oz.
The wicked old Richard loves his name.
She is the anti-corruption fighter and we
were celebrating that we got her out.
What they were doing was this dangerous
form of diplomacy.
They had the wherewithal and the means to
get recalled an American ambassador.
They did that and there was no turning
back.
And so as the Ukrainian presidential
elections start heating up in April,
all of a sudden, here comes Vladimir
Zelensky out of nowhere.
Here was a guy that was a comedian that
had no chance whatsoever.
Every day he got bigger
and bigger until eventually
he just took over and
won in the landslide.
Having played the role of
President in a TV show, the Lord
and me, Zelensky is now on
course to make that role a reality.
Zelensky and his team can celebrate this
election victory, but defeating corruption
and ending the war with Russia is going to
prove far harder.
All of a sudden, it's a holy cast of
characters and our mission changes.
We need to open up a backdoor channel between
Zelensky and Giuliani on behalf of Trump.
The integration date of President-elect
Volodymyr Zelensky is being discussed.
The inauguration is going
to be big, and it's going
to be this huge event to
show a strain for Russia.
It was very important for Trump to be
there.
And Trump said, I don't
think I can make it, but
I will send the next best
thing, I'll send Pence.
So they were all set,
Rudy realized that the
inauguration was going
to be their pressure point.
Then he would use it to our advantage.
We have runaway diplomats operating in
another country under nobody's watch.
Nobody's age is nothing.
If we lose sight of that, we have
problems.
And if we lose sight of what happened,
we're in serious trouble as a country.
Lev started to slip away, reminds me of
the Titanic scene.
Jack, there's a boat.
Jack, that's pretty much where we were during
the four years of the presidency of Trump.
I'd never know when he was coming or
going.
He could buy a ticket in the
morning and then cancel it
by night and then be somewhere
else by the next morning.
When he was home, he was unbearable.
It was Trump, Trump, Trump, MAGA,
MAGA, Ukraine, scandal, Joe Biden.
There was nothing else to talk to Lev
about.
It was hardcore control over my family.
Are you kidding me?
You're going to watch MSNBC.
You don't know that that's full of lies
and they hate Trump.
That was part of the MAGA cult movement.
Once they got you in and
they told you what you could
watch, who you could speak
to and what you could believe.
Now I have to eat and pretend like it's
not a big deal.
That Trump is making fun of disabled
people.
I don't know what I said.
I don't remember.
Being derogatory towards women.
She's shocked that I picked her.
I'm not thinking, Mr. That's okay.
I know you're not thinking.
You never do.
I'm sorry.
My husband is now turning
in to the same orange
person on TV that he
didn't go spray tanning.
Eventually, that might have gotten there,
you know?
I mean, eventually him and Rudy would have
been going together to get spray tanning.
They were in this sort of, like,
Republican political-industrial complex.
They were in it.
He seemed like he thought he was
untouchable.
My client had gotten a phone call.
Hey, you know, our guy Lev has connections
straight to the top.
Why are you busting our chops about this
500 grand?
It was a thinly veiled threat.
My client is a real tough-minded guy.
He wasn't gonna be deterred by any threat
thinly veiled or otherwise.
That inspired me to be just as tenacious.
The mission was now to schedule a meeting
between Rudy Giuliani and President-Black
Vladimir Zelensky.
Trump wanted the new
president to announce an
investigation into Joe
Biden and Hunter Biden.
The announcement would legitimize the
story that we've been pushing in the media.
He wanted Rudy to close the deal.
We're in Ukraine.
We're pounding the pavement.
We're meeting with every kind of
character.
From your foreign ministers, your
oligarchs, your criminal.
Anybody in there from rabbis to pope.
My dear brother, we are here in Ukraine.
We're here with the Rabbi Moist.
God bless you, Mr. Giuliani.
There wasn't a rock that we didn't
overturn.
I mean, from bartenders to waitresses,
we went everywhere.
It was like a groundhog day.
We would get promises.
Everybody would tell us, yes.
Great.
Absolutely.
We'll set it up.
And then two hours later, they disappear.
I was starting getting
really creepy because some
forces out there are
stopping this from happening.
We didn't know at the time the U.S.
Embassy was following everything we were
doing.
After every meeting, somebody
from the embassy would
come right in afterwards and
tell them, Domi would rooty.
This is illegitimate.
There's proper channels.
This needs to stop.
It was us first in deep state.
And the embassy, and we represent Donald
Trump, kiss her ass.
So after several people ghosting us, they
finally set up a meeting with Minister Vakhov.
He said, well, I need an official letter.
I said, no problem.
I gave Rudy a call.
Within a couple of minutes, there was an
official letter e-mailed over to me.
Vakhov's eyes changed.
He had to say that this was real now.
We had an agreement on May 10th,
Rudy was supposed to fly in.
And there was supposed to be a meeting
between Zelensky and Rudy.
So at five o'clock in the morning,
I hear my phone gone crazy.
It's Rudy.
I thought maybe he was drunk or something.
Pick up the phone and he's screaming.
They're all against us.
This was all a setup.
The Ukrainians were going to come out
after Giuliani and I mean Zelensky.
And claimed that Giuliani was trash-shaked
them down.
And Giuliani said, that's it.
Get out of there.
We're not going back to Ukraine.
Fuck them.
They're all liars.
You know, we're done.
About an hour later, my phone starts
blowing up again.
Now it's the Ukrainians.
All the Ukrainian officials and oligarchs
call me up saying what the fuck is going on.
Rudy went on Fox and basically went on a
rampage.
I'm not going to go because
I think I'm walking into
a group of people that are
enemies of the president.
Calling out names.
A gentleman by the name of Leshanko.
If you had told the whole world that
Ukraine is corrupt, then fuck you.
So no trip on Sunday, no trips to Ukraine.
No trips.
My ass in the light.
Any one of these guys out there that I was
dealing with could have just said,
he's not leaving and I'm not leaving.
It was a terrible morning.
All of U.S.
and Ukrainian relations are now on the
line.
So I set up a meeting with Lukasenko and I
started going strong and saying,
this could all be resolved.
President Zelensky needs to announce a
fucking investigation.
This will stop Lukasenko saying,
give me an hour.
And within an hour I got called from
Shafer.
Sergei Shafer was the intern chief of
staff to President Zelensky.
He was his partner in his entertainment
business.
So I called Rudy.
I'll never forget that conversation.
He was very loud, so I had to hold the
phone off over here.
And he was very, I mean,
he was like, you make
sure you tell them like
we're not messing around.
Make him understand that if Zelensky does not
pronounce an investigation into the Bidens.
By Monday, there will be no relationship.
There will be no military aid.
There will be no medical aid.
And vice president Pence will not show up
at your inauguration.
I was like, holy shit.
Pence canceling?
It was a message to Vladimir Putin.
That we are no longer supporting Ukraine.
Like, how am I going to say this?
So I start practicing with Igor.
I see Igor starting pale white.
He's like, you're not going to say this.
You do understand this is the president of
Ukraine.
We have to think about our safety.
We have to get out of here.
We get downstairs.
There's a whole entourage of bodyguards
and cars.
Igor kept trying to explain to me,
yellow, they're protecting us.
But if tomorrow they decide not to protect
us, we're off to see Sergei Shafer.
The meeting was at a restaurant called
Prague.
The whole restaurant was closed.
Probably 40, 50 bodyguards between mine
and Sergei Shafer's.
And then there was a three of us.
And the little table outside.
This is literally like a scene I have a
spy movie.
I mean, James Bond has nothing on us.
Bond.
James Bond.
Igor sitting next to me, taking shots
because he was nervous as hell.
I had Shafer's heart.
I understand this meeting might not be
pleasant, but it's very serious.
This is what needs to happen.
We've been trying to get a meeting with
President Leggsolenski.
For some reason, we're having
difficulties.
We need your help to be able to arrange
this meeting.
Looking back at it, it was just incredible
how I was explaining to him that we were
trying to root our
corruption while at that
moment, corrupting
him to the fullest extreme.
It was a simple meeting.
There was not that much to discuss.
And that was it.
That night, they ghosted me.
I remember Rudy saying, well, now they're
going to see the wrath of Trump.
Next morning, the Ukrainians got a phone
call from the United States telling him
that Mike Pence is not going to be coming
to the inauguration.
Boy, was that a problem.
Like, this is the way he's going to go
out, running around for Trump.
Is this really worth his life?
Ukrainian officials wanted
Vice President Pence to attend
the inauguration for the new
president, Zelenski, in Kiev.
What are you learning about that trip?
It was canceled, right?
Pence canceling was almost like a death
sentence for us.
We were trying to
advance the election.
Oligar Igor Kolomoysky owned television
broadcast network where Zelenski made his bones.
Zelenski and Kolomoysky were essentially
friends and supporters of one another.
This guy is as bad as they come.
I mean, this guy has an army of 10,000
people of his own.
So this is not an irregular Oligar.
The first statement he makes on television
as he gets back is...
Basically threatening our lives.
I'm pretty sure I probably broke down
after that, and I was just like,
what if he doesn't come back?
Giuliani started tweeting, hitting all
media, basically telling Vladimir Zelenski
that if he does not arrest Igor Kolomoysky
immediately, and if something happens to
either me or Igor while we're in Ukraine,
that he will be the blame for it.
Now we're getting a call from the interior
minister saying, you're out of here now.
Within moments, we were
fitted with bulletproof vests
thrown on into a convoy of
cars and wished off into a plane.
No immigration, no passport control.
Next thing you know, we were gone.
We were out of Ukraine and off to Paris.
And that was the last time I ever was in
Ukraine.
That's when Trump has to enter the fray.
A troubling private conversation between
President Trump and a foreign leader has
rung such an alarm
bell that the intelligence
community's internal watchdog
calls it an urgent concern.
This was a July 25th call between the
president and Ukrainian President Zelenski.
And what's jumping off
the page to me is that the
president of Ukraine says,
where are the javelins?
Where is the defense support you're giving
us?
And the very next sentence by the president
is, I would like you to do us a favor.
During the call, Mr. Trump pressured the
Ukrainian president eight times to
investigate former Vice President Joe
Biden's son, Hunter.
It was a very easy connect to
dots to what Levitz started to
do and what President Trump
had eventually tried to do himself.
The president was saying, I need this
favor.
And by the way, I've got your money.
This conversation was about a trade.
It clearly was a quid pro quo.
There was no quid pro quo.
No quid pro quo.
There was no quid pro quo.
This is a very dangerous situation for our
country right now.
And it is amazing that we continue to let
this man be in charge of nuclear weapons.
Question, sir, was what did
you want President Zelenski
to do about Vice President
Biden and his son, Hunter?
Are you talking to me?
The irony is that it comes shortly after
he had just been investigated from using a
foreign power to meddle in a presidential
election.
And it's happening all over again.
That call was perfect.
It couldn't have been night, sir.
Even if you don't believe the whole
Russia, Russia, Russia, that Trump
colluded with the Russians, I
want to make it very clear that
he colluded with the Ukrainians
to meddle in the 2020 election.
And I know it because I was there.
That's really where things started to
accelerate downward quickly.
Mr. Trump did order a hold on military aid
to Ukraine.
President Trump ordered his acting chief
of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to delay that
military aid to Ukraine just days before a
call with the Ukrainian president.
We found out that Trump actually withheld
military aid.
That was a very, very serious moment in my
life.
The message I gave them, Trump actually
acted on it.
I was horrified.
It was like holy cow.
Now we're in it.
We're talking about not releasing aid to
Ukraine.
Officials at the Office of Management and
Budget, we laid Mr. Trump's order to
withhold hundreds of millions of dollars
in military aid.
One career diplomat sounding the alarm
very directly by noting in writing in this
text, I think it's crazy
to withhold security
assistance for help
with a political campaign.
Never in a million years I think we were
get to that point.
I never thought that we would not get a
meeting with Zelensky.
Zelensky really stood up to live and to
Rudy and to Trump and he just wouldn't budge.
Ukrainian weren't as corrupt as he thought
they were.
They weren't as corrupt as him or Rudy.
I really hope that you and President Putin
get together and can solve your problem.
That would be a tremendous achievement.
I thought Trump's a hero
saving our democracy and
Zelensky is a corrupt leader
and it was all the opposite.
At the end of the day, it
turned out that Trump was
the actual criminal and
Zelensky was a stand-up guy.
We were all waiting for Trump to get presidential
and instead he just became a monster.
And he's a bully and he really needs to
focus on himself.
Like, please stop focusing on the United
States.
Go sit down.
It's time.
He's serial entrepreneur type judgment
debtors.
They're going to find themselves into
something.
And Lev found himself into the biggest
something I've ever seen a debtor ever get into.
We were able to find a
account that Lev controlled
through an entity called
Aaron Investments 1 LLC.
The $325,000 actually came from.
They gave 325,000 to America's first
action.
The money got flagged by a bank.
They saw the hallmarks of money laundering
and fraud.
That got the attention of the feds.
The campaign legal center filed a
complaint with the ABC.
They're basically alleging a straw man
donation by global energy producers.
And then we were off to the races.
That was the smoking gun we needed.
And then a tweet came
out that listed the top five
donors for Trump and him
and Igor were on that list.
People started to dig
in into trying to figure
out where his love is
from, what he's doing.
At that point I started to feel more kind
of unsafe.
I felt like things were destabilizing a
bit.
This is an NBC News special report.
Breaking this evening, House Democrats
tonight are taking the first formal step
that could potentially lead to the
impeachment of President Trump.
The impeachment inquiry
is centered on President
Trump's phone call with
the leader of Ukraine.
Now the question, did
the president pressure
him to investigate
political rival Joe Biden?
They testified that President Trump froze
military aid to Ukraine in order to force
a public announcement of investigation
into his political rivals.
Forced out, the former American
ambassador to Ukraine tells
lawmakers that President
Trump pressed to have her fired.
Yvonnevich was recalled from her post in
May, amidst charges from Rudy Giuliani and
in conservative media that she had spoken
out against the president.
Getting rid of Ambassador Yvonnevich
helped set the stage for an irregular
channel that could pursue the two investigations
that mattered so much to the president.
The 2016 conspiracy theory, and most
important, an investigation into the 2020
political opponent he apparently feared
most, Joe Biden.
I get a letter from Congress, basically
requesting all of the information that I
have gathered in Ukraine while I was doing
work for President Trump and Rudy.
I called Rudy right away and told him,
he said, oh, don't worry about it.
Let me call Trump and we'll take care of
this.
We're going to get you a lawyer and it was
John Dowd.
He represented President Trump in a matter
prior to that.
For John Dowd to officially represent me,
the president had to sign a letter to
waive a conflict of interest, and I have
that letter.
So I fly in directly to John Dowd's house
and Cape Cod.
The first thing he does is get all the
president's lawyers, all the president's
men on the phone and says, you know,
it's game time.
On the call was J.Suckolo, Rudy Giuliani,
Victoria Tunzing, and Joe DeGeneva.
All the president's putzes.
John Dowd sent the letter of response,
basically a fuck you letter.
It was a big joke about everybody couldn't
believe that the way he responded to
Congress, and the
Catholics, for him to not speak
to the government, not
attempt to cooperate.
One could say that
Lev's first lawyers were
concerned about interest
other than Lev Parnas.
I mean, I'm a little confused at the time.
I thought they wanted me to
testify on behalf of Trump to
tell the truth of everything I
uncovered about the Bidens.
It was the opposite.
We're going to go dark.
Nobody on our side was scared of Congress.
There was no repercussions.
Trump and Rudy thought and still think
that they're above the law.
The message in Trump world was,
don't worry about accountability.
There won't be any.
You do what you need to do to protect
Trump.
Right, as we have mentioned
in our monologue, we
obtained new Ukrainian
documents from Rudy Giuliani.
You interviewed Shoken.
We know why he was fired.
He was told why he was fired.
He's now set at five separate
times that he was fired because
he was interviewing and
investigating Biden's corrupt son.
Rudy Giuliani goes on TV with the Victor
Shoken letter.
The letter basically said the first time
ever that he officially got fired by Joe
Biden because he was looking into Burisma
and Hunter Biden.
Now Hannity wants to do an exclusive
interview with Shoken.
Rudy asked me to help Fox to set up this
exclusive interview.
So the interview was arranged in Vienna.
We had the studios ready.
Shoken was there.
And we were flying out there.
In the morning, we met
up with Rudy at the BLbreakfast area and
went over our game plan.
Lev and I spoke during that day just fine.
He was telling me he's just singing out the
Trump hotel with Rudy waiting for his plane.
Rudy said that he got
called from President Trump
and he needed to see
him at the White House.
Rudy was going to meet us a couple of days
later.
So I didn't think anything of it.
He told me go ahead and set everything up
and I'll see you there Saturday.
And then he left for the airport.
Lev's boarding time.
A couple of men jumped out and said,
can we see your passports?
Me and Igor gave them our passports.
And they turned around and said,
this is them.
You are on their arrest.
They started handcuffing us.
And one of the FBI agents says,
you know, I don't want to be the bearer of
bad news, but your house is being raided
right now.
They busted through
the back door as if, I don't
know, they're coming to
Osama bin Laden's house.
One lingering thought was that I had,
like, what did you do?
The arrests of two associates of Trump lawyer
Rudy Giuliani on campaign finance violations.
The two arrested at Dulles Airport after
buying a one-way ticket out of the country.
They're associates of the president's
personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
These are the first criminal charges
emerging from the Trump administration's
controversial relationship with Ukraine.
The government documents
show that the men helped
Giuliani set up a meeting
with high -level Ukrainians.
Who Giuliani was lobbying to investigate
Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
One of the agents said to me, I could try
to get your wife on the phone.
I told her I love there.
I told her not to work called Rudy.
That was the last I spoke to him for the
next, like, ten days.
Your froom in and left parties were picked
up at Dulles on Wednesday night.
Just hours after the Wall
Street Journal reports, they had
lunch with Rudy Giuliani at
the Trump International Hotel.
I think Rudy knew and was told not to be
on that plane.
I didn't get from Rudy that he knew this
was going to happen, but I also got from
Rudy that he wasn't very surprised that it
happened.
Rudy was saying that, you know,
don't worry, everything's gonna be fine.
What's the Democrats at the deep state?
It started to feel more and
more and more of everybody
kind of just disappearing
into the background.
I guess I met him one time and he came to
an event and took a picture with me.
That was hard to go through having people
just turn away.
I don't know that far yet.
In the summary.
How well do you know Parnas?
It was funny.
I didn't even realize he was you graining.
I thought he was Israeli.
When Trump came on TV... Were you relying
on Lev Parnas to get rid of your ambassador?
And he was like, no.
I don't know him.
Well, I don't know him.
I don't know Parnas other than I guess I
had pictures taken, which I do with
thousands of people and million people
today that I didn't meet.
I don't know who he is.
I don't know what he's about.
Don't know where he comes from.
Don't know nothing about him.
He might be a fine gentleman.
Perhaps he's a fine man.
Perhaps he's not.
I know nothing about him.
I mean, that was like so low.
It was just a lie.
Of course you know him.
Trump says he doesn't know these guys,
but there he is with Igor, looking like
they just won best RV dealership in Gary,
Indiana.
When I told him that Trump said he doesn't
know him, he didn't believe me.
He's like, no way.
What's Rudy doing?
Where's the Genova?
Where are they?
He had no idea that they weren't all
running to get him out.
I was waiting for the cavalry.
The cavalry that we came.
Love was expendable.
He was a good front person.
He was someone you could ultimately
disavow or maybe arrest and shut up.
The federal government took notice of our
case.
Someone was absolutely
looking at what we were
doing and it was aiding
them in their investigation.
Obviously, our intent was not to have Mr.
Parnas indicted and put in jail.
People who are in jail can't pay debt.
In the middle of the night, I see a piece
of paper being slipped under my jail cell.
It's a postcard from Rudy Giuliani.
Dear Lev and Igor, the lunch was good,
and I enjoyed sharing a table with you.
Trump's hotel is nice, don't you think?
I'm sorry what happened
at those airports, and
I guess we won't be
meeting in Vienna after all.
Don't worry, Paul's lawyers are good.
He only got eight to ten years,
so maybe things will work out.
Rudy G.
I felt extremely abandoned.
He was like a father figure.
I really trust him.
This is where the first time I... it was the
beginning of me getting out of the code.
I didn't want to believe
that he could hurt us
after how much Lev
put into that relationship.
Maybe more than our marriage at the time.
I stopped trusting everything
they were telling me and
wanted to get somebody to
represent me that I could trust.
When I entered the case, Lev and I decided
remaining silent was not in his best interest.
That it would be far better for Lev if he
appeared to be a credible person,
willing to tell important truths at great
risk to himself.
I basically was going to tell the world
the truth.
I'm not going to hide from anybody.
Lev, pardon me.
I look forward to defending myself
vigorously in court, and I'm certain that
in the time truth will be revealed,
and I will be vindicated.
Thank you both for agreeing to do this.
I know that this is a leap of trust to speak
publicly in this way for the first time.
Thank you for having us here.
You gave the message of a quid pro quo to
Ukrainian officials.
The first quid pro quo again was when we
met with President Poroshenko.
I want to talk to the FBI, the DOJ,
the Southern District.
Well, nobody wants to talk to me.
Are you afraid, Mr. Mayor, that you could
be indicted?
Oh, wow.
What's really interesting is
Brie Giuliani has never been
charged for operating as
an unregistered foreign agent.
They helped me find people, and as I've
said, they did a good job.
The marquee count in
the first indictment was
lived somehow exerting
suasion on the president.
On behalf of some Ukrainian officials to
remove the U.S.
Ambassador Ukraine, with the superseding
indictment, the government very quietly
excised their marquee
allegation and glummed into
that indictment, a
garden variety, fraud case.
The best thing that happened to President
Trump and Brie Giuliani is that Igor and
Lev get charged with campaign finance
violations.
I'm poor Lev.
I don't know what he's doing.
He's up.
You can now paint them as fraudsters.
How did these two guys,
and I don't think it's a stretch to
say thugs, how were they
meeting with our political leaders?
None of this raises red flags.
Criminals with no credibility.
Paul Giuliani and associates.
Lev Parnas.
Hey!
I am Igor Ferrimas.
Hey, you guys!
And therefore, their testimony and what
they have to say doesn't come.
I don't know those gentlemen.
Now it's possible I have a picture with
them because I have a picture with everybody.
I don't know them.
I welcome him to say that even more.
Every time he says I'll show him another
picture, he's lying.
He's lying.
What people probably didn't expect is that
Lev photo documented everything.
He literally had the receipts.
Over 750 pages of those materials formed the
basis for the vote on the first impeachment.
On this vote, the A's are 229,
the A's are 198, present is one,
article two is adopted.
So I have the 300 page impeachment
articles.
A hundred pages of those are my direct
evidence.
No, I was not able to testify.
Republicans made a huge thing and they
didn't allow me in.
What were they scared of?
Do you know if Mr. Giuliani was ever in
contact with Mr. Barr specifically about
the fact that he was trying to get Ukraine to
announce these investigations into Joe Biden?
Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Barr knew about that.
Mr. Barr, I have to have known everything.
It was clearly a high level
of concern at the highest
levels of the Justice
Department and Congress.
A lot of people had to be involved to try
to keep the truth from coming out.
Bill Barr, not only politicized,
he weaponized the DOJ on behalf of Donald
Trump to go after his political enemies
and help his political friends.
Swaddle the critic, shut up the witness,
change the charging decisions,
recover to try to protect the President.
I believe that this was worse than
Watergate.
Lev Parnas, an associate
of Rudy Giuliani, sentenced
to 20 months in federal
prison in Lower Manhattan.
Parnas has been found guilty of federal
campaign finance criminal charges.
Prosecutors accused Parnas of hatching a
scheme to funnel millions of dollars in
funds from a wealthy Russian financier in
the U.S.
elections.
I was used to watch cult movies.
Well, you know what they think of me?
They think I'm the son of God.
I think, you know, something wrong with
these people never happened to me.
People call things, you know, a lie,
a lie.
But my God's grace, if I didn't get
arrested and died, it decolonized.
Whatever caused me to stop following this
madman and to be able to wake up again.
I would have been divorced.
I would have lost my family.
He just got caught up.
And by the time he realized it,
unfortunately, he was already behind bars.
Trump inspired me for the first time in my
life to vote.
And I did.
I voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
Hopefully, it's not too late for other
people.
I betrayed Ukraine.
I betrayed America.
I'm sorry.
When I met him, I saw me in that,
you know, he was a broken man.
He paid a huge price for all this.
Luckily, he's got a strong family,
and that remained.
Since the day of my rest,
every day for the past five
years, I've been saying I'm
sorry to my wife, to my family.
I'll be saying sorry for the rest of my
life.
I saw Marie Ivanovich testify in the
impeachment and to see the pain and to see
what she went through, what I put her
through.
President Trump said that I
was bad news to another world
leader, and that I would be
going through some things.
She didn't deserve any of this.
It was a terrible moment.
I feel foolish.
I feel disgusted.
I feel ashamed of myself.
I truly believe that we're helping
America.
We're looking back at it now.
We've destroyed America.
We have such division.
People are at each other's throats.
And the sad part, that was exactly what
Vladimir Putin wanted.
And we gave it to him in a solar platter.
And how ironic is it?
The Reagan Republicans were that anti
-Soviet Union Russia stopped the Cold War,
pushed for democracy.
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
And now here we have the Republicans
screaming, literally, Russian propaganda.
Why shouldn't that root for Russia,
which I am?
Putin ain't woke.
We get along.
I like Putin.
He likes me.
You know, we get along.
Putin's a killer.
A lot of killers.
We get a lot of killers while you think
our country's so innocent.
I don't know how anyone can look at Putin
and think anything but a monster.
Just like I don't think you can look at
Trump.
I can't look at Trump without thinking
that he's a monster.
Anybody that's ever been
around down Trump to
work for him at the White
House knows the truth.
He's unfit for office.
I cannot, in good conscience, endorse
Donald Trump.
Pence is joining a remarkably
large choir, former Trump
administration officials, who
have come out against him.
Trump's former attorney general,
two former defense secretaries,
two of his chiefs of staff, two national
security officers.
I was as close as you could get to him.
I did all his dirty work, and Donald Trump
doesn't care about anybody except for himself.
He doesn't care about the Constitution.
He doesn't care about the United States.
Because Donald Trump doesn't want to be
president.
He wants to be a dictator.
He wants to be Vladimir Putin,
president for life.
I hope one day not only will the country
forgive me, Ukraine will forgive me.
I hope one day Hunter Biden could really
forgive me.
I feel a lot of responsibility because of
our actions in Ukraine, pushing all of
this information against Hunter
Biden has now caused real
problems, real criminal
problems that he is now facing.
The first child of a sitting US president
has been convicted of a crime.
To watch Hunter Biden, an American citizen
that has nothing to do with politics,
a son, and I have sons to watch the pain
that caused in his life.
A jury in Delaware fighting presidential son
Hunter Biden guilty of three federal counts.
I just hope one day I can say I'm sorry
and make a right.
You ready, babe?
Are you ready?
Hunter.
One long time.
Thanks for making the trip, my friend.
2018, November, we were sitting with Rudy
in the York of the Grand Habanabro.
And Rudy gets a call from one of his
investigators and starts telling him all
this stuff about Marisse Ma and all kinds
of stuff.
And Rudy, like usual, he'd sit back down.
We would have drinks at cigars if he'd
tell us everything that was going on.
And he starts talking a few months before
my partner Igor had sent a video from
Ukraine from one of these that we later
found out to be a Russian operative in the
city of your father, basically saying,
Oh, son of a bitch.
We got fired.
Rudy took a look at that video and
basically said, we got your joke.
A week later, we were at the White House.
Or meeting with Trump in the Red Room.
The week later, we were in Ukraine.
We were looking for Victor Schulke to
pressure him to give us darn or make up
information to be able to start this whole
thing.
See you in Ukraine soon.
When did it cross over from
being a hair -brained Rudy
Giuliani operation in concert
with Trump to the DOJ?
When did Trump's lackeys inside the DOJ
begin to also conspire to, you know,
to take daily?
I mean, basically from the very beginning.
From that first initial meeting with Trump
and right after that, Giuliani started
calling all his contacts at the DOJ and
FBI to start putting pressure to look into
you, to look into your dad and all of your
Ukraine dealings.
You have to say, Hunter, at that time,
I truly believe that was a deep state.
I truly believe that you
were up to some shit,
but there was never any
criminality and anything.
That's the whole thing.
There were just basically, you know,
innuendos, conspiracy theories,
but no actual facts.
The crazy part?
I mean, I feel embarrassed, Hunter.
I mean, you're bankrupt.
How does it get my bank records?
My bank records aren't even on a computer.
I got an email from John Solomon that said
that his friends at the FBI got your
records and I don't know where,
how, what.
So the FBI secretly subpoenaed and got my
bank records under the Trump
administration, handed them to John
Solomon, and then Rudy Giuliani
recirculates them back into the DOJ and on
the meeting.
Absolutely.
John Solomon, him and Hannity,
and Fox had a whole system go up.
Yeah.
So Fox was definitely, like, directly
involved?
Oh, 100%.
I watched after you got arrested,
and then clearly were kind of chunks.
They turned their back on you.
And at that point, I just say,
you know, I wasn't very sympathetic.
Oh, I'm sure.
I'm not sure.
What conversations have you had with Lev
Parnas and Igor Fruhman?
I don't know those gentlemen.
What they did, though, is that they so
quickly turned you into this supervillain.
It may very well be with these Russian
payments to Lev Parnas that Lev himself is
part of a disinformation campaign,
a guy that's under indictment,
a guy that's a known
grifter, a guy that had a
company called Fraud Inc
that he ran into the ground.
The man was a demonstrated liar.
And they, you know, go after your personal
life, and they talk about, you know,
that you're really a Russian.
I mean, all of these things, similarly.
I gave him a lot of ammunition.
Addiction is never an excuse, but it's an
explanation.
It's an explanation why I ended up in some
of the rooms that I ended up in,
doing things that I'm ashamed of today.
The best thing that could have ever
happened to me was getting arrested.
That's crazy as that sounds.
It really takes a big person.
To not only admit that
they're wrong, but to do
so in public, and to do
it on the stage you did.
Lev Parnas was the centerpiece
of a bomb -throwing congressional
hearing on the Biden
impeachment inquiry this week.
Today, I admit my own wrongdoings.
I have been a convicted
federal election campaign
and fraud crimes, and
served my sentence.
Despite rigorous attempts by those in power
to silence me, I will be silenced no longer.
To go in front of a hostile
committee in Congress that you
know has no compulsion to
break every role to embarrass you.
And to put yourself in that position just
so you can tell the truth.
There are 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.
One of the hardest things to do in life is
to make amends.
And it's one of the
principles of like the
program I follow in terms
of my own addictions.
But to do it, the way that you've done it,
on TV, in public, where you're getting the
goddamn hell beat out of you.
Sounds like everyone here today, the only
one working for a Russian oligarch was you.
They didn't listen to the truth because if
they would listen to the questions...
The question Mr. Gates had is for me to
hear the truth.
You can't have a lot about Gates.
What I saw was somebody
with just an enormous
reserve of character
when it really counted.
Today I ask you to consider the following.
In nearly a year traveling the world and
interviewing officials in different
countries, I found precisely zero evidence
of the Biden's corruption in Ukraine.
The only information ever
pushed on the Biden's in
Ukraine has come from one
source and one source only.
Russia and Russian agents.
And so, bottom my heart, I promise you,
you're a hero to me.
I was proud, you know.
I was really, really, really proud.
I was proud of you.
Everything was for the ultimate benefit of
Donald Trump and thereby Vladimir Putin,
who used this narrative to manipulate the
public ahead of the 2020 elections.
Sadly, they're still doing this today as
we approach the 2024 elections.
Hunter, I want you to know
I wrote this book to tell the
truth about what happened
during the Trump administration.
He used your battle
with addiction for his own
agenda to hurt you and
your family and your father.
You were a casualty in all of this.
I regret very truly my
decision to work with those
that tried to bring you
and your family down.
I will do everything in my power to clear
your name going forward.
Thank you, my friend.
You know, I'll treasure this.
And one thing I've learned is that truth
and love always prevail.
It may take a little while,
but the fact of the matter
is we get up every day and
we do the next right thing.
We win.
I'm so sorry for that.
Yeah.
Say, it was a bit...
Please, please, excuse me.
Listen, listen.
We get a second chance.
Both of you do.
That's right.
Both of you.
Yeah.
Good evening.
I'm Ali Velsian for my friend,
Stephanie Rule.
We got a special edition of the 11th hour
head.
You've just finished watching the new
MSNBC film from Russia with Lev.
That's the first documentary produced by
my colleague.