On last week’s episode of The 45th podcast, I went through a timeline of events leading up to Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8th, with a focus on the Trump Team’s post-election contacts with Russia, and actions by Trump that were either intended to, or could have the effect of, impeding the investigation into those contacts. There have been a few requests for some kind of graphic outlining what was discussed in the episode, so here it is.

Heads up, you’re probably going to have to open the diagram in a new tab to be able to read all of it [PDF]. Also, since there’s only so much that can fit in a graph, I’ve made a separate table, below, with record citations and larger article excerpts.

-Susan

In today’s episode of The 45th Podcast, Jon Cryer joins Rabia and I for a comprehensive review of the many contacts between Trump and Russia.

To help people follow along, I made a chart of pre-election Trump-Russia contacts that you can view here, which will be updated as inevitable further contacts are made known to the public.

Due to its size, the best way of viewing it right now is through Lucid Chart, but if that doesn’t work for you, I’ve put up a PDF copy as well. (Though please note the rendering will be a bit off!)

Also, the contacts didn’t stop at the election, so don’t forget to check out the chart of post-election contacts between Trump and Russia as well! All charts are updated periodically as new info comes in about the Trump team’s Russia dealings, which, these days, seems to be at least three times a week or so.

-Susan

This blog post is a continuation of a Tweet-thread I posted earlier this week about Trump’s settlement/nondisclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels, and the questions surrounding the original source of the $130K that was used to make the payoff.

Originally, I had been planning to continue with additional updates on the issue in tweet form… until at some point I realized it would’ve gone on to like tweet 736/736 to actually do it. So in order to spare everyone that, I decided it was time to dust off my poor neglected blog instead, and do a real post for once.

Brief background on the Stormy/Trump Nondisclosure Agreement & Settlement

• Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford) and Donald Trump (fake name David Dennison) had an affair in 2006-2007, after meeting at a Tahoe golf tournament.
• The affair was partially reported on in 2011, but never confirmed.
• During the 2016 election, beginning sometime in late summer of 2016, Stormy’s attorney Keith Davidson approached the Trump camp (presumably meaning Michael Cohen, Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization and Trump’s personal attorney) to inform them of Stormy’s plan to speak out about the affair.
• Cohen countered with an offer of a confidential settlement and nondisclosure agreement instead.
• Stormy accepted, and an NDA was negotiated between the parties; the total pay out to Stormy would be $130K, and in exchange she would agree not to disclose any details of her affair with Trump.
• In October 2016, less than a month before the election, the deal began to fall apart when Trump failed to make the agreed-upon settlement payment.
• Consequently, Stormy Daniels spoke to reporters about finally going public with her story, apparently concluding that if Trump was never going to actually pay her, so she might as well get paid for her story by telling it publicly. According to a Slate article published in January 2018, this occurred in about mid-October:

Daniels said she was talking to me and sharing these details because Trump was stalling on finalizing the confidentiality agreement and paying her. Given her experience with Trump, she suspected he would stall her until after the election, and then refuse to sign or pay up. …

I told Daniels that Slate did not pay sources but encouraged her to come forward without compensation. I proposed interviewing her on Trumpcast and writing her story. She never said yes and never said no. Late in the discussion, I asked a Slate colleague to help me verify her account. We both spoke to Daniels and to Gina Rodriguez, a former porn actress turned agent, who Daniels was using to negotiate with media organizations. I gathered that Daniels was also discussing going public on Good Morning America. At one point she considered holding a press conference in Dallas, where she lives.

• On October 18, 2016, one such story was published by The Smoking Gun
• But subsequently, “about a week before the election,” Stormy went silent, having presumably taken the payout from Trump and agreeing to the NDA

The Wall Street Journal’s Coverage of the Settlement Payment

The Stormy story disappeared into nothing in the final weeks of the election, and essentially disappeared from view for the next 14 months. Then, in January 2018, the story suddenly came alive again when the Wall Street Journal published a series of reports on how Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, made the $130,000 settlement payment to Stormy Daniels’s attorney.

The following is a timeline of known events surrounding the Stormy settlement, compiled from a dozen or so different reports that have come out since the WSJ story with different details on what happened.

Sept. 30, 2016
Cohen forms Resolution Consultants, LLC, a Delaware entity. For unknown (and possibly ill-advised) reasons, Cohen chooses a name that is completely transparent about the LLC being created in connection with some kind of settlement.

Oct. 1-Oct. 11, 2016
A settlement agreement is negotiated and agreed to in principle, but never executed, because the $130K payment is not made to Stormy’s attorney as agreed.

An earlier draft of the Side Letter is leaked by Stormy to Jacob Weisberg over at Slate. It appears to specify that payment is to be made to “RCI” (possibly Resolution Consultants), and also contains what may be typos. For instance, in paragraph 3, the Side Letter mistakenly refers to “DAVID DELUCIA,” even though Trump’s pseudonym for this agreement is “DAVID DENNISON.” (Though not directly relevant here, it’s worth noting that one possible explanation is that Stormy’s NDA/Side Letter is a standard agreement Trump uses regularly, and “DAVID DELUCIA” was the result of someone’s failure to correct update the template to match the terms being used in the Stormy agreement.)

Oct. 12, 2016
On October 12, 2016, Stormy’s attorney writes a brief, two-word email to Cohen: “We good?”

From context, this is likely Davidson checking in with Cohen to confirm that the settlement is actually going to proceed as planned. (And, although this is reading a bit between the lines, it also suggests perhaps there had been previous hitches in the negotiation, causing Davidson to feel the need to check in with Cohen and confirm that, this time, all systems really are go.)

Cohen responds quickly, stating, “Yes. It’s Yom Kippur so the office is for all purposes effectively closed. I am in tomorrow but can speak for the next 3 hours via cell if necessary.”

Although somewhat ambiguous, the impression given by these emails is that:
(1) Stormy Daniels’ attorney was asking about the status of the payment to Stormy,
(2) Cohen was trying to reassure Stormy’s attorney that the payment would be forthcoming, but that due to the holiday and lack of personnel at the office, he might be unable to finalize the practical side of the arrangements that day.

Oct. 13-Oct. 16, 2016
No payment to Stormy is made. Stormy seems to lose patience and/or hope in Trump’s intentions to ever pay, so she decides to go public with her story. She appears to have been in discussion with numerous outlets (Slate, Good Morning America, and Fox all appear to have been working the story), and the Trump campaign may have been fielding questions from these outlets seeking comment on the story. (One outlet, The Smoking Gun, will in fact go ahead and publish a story on Oct. 18th).

Oct. 17, 2016
Stormy has given up on Trump making good on the settlement. According to the Washington Post, on the morning of the 17th, Stormy’s attorney emails Cohen twice, to inform him he must pay up immediately or the deal is off.

In an Oct. 17 email, an attorney for Daniels — a porn star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — threatened to cancel the nondisclosure agreement by the end of the day. . . . A second email to Cohen, a short time after the first, said Daniels was calling the deal off. “Please be advised that my client deems her settlement agreement canceled and void,” Daniels’s lawyer, Keith Davidson, wrote in the email, which The Washington Post obtained.

At 10:21am that same day, Michael Cohen forms a new Delaware LLC. This one is called Essential Consultants, LLC. Two minutes later, at 10:23am, the previously created LLC, Resolution Consultants, LLC, is dissolved. (One might speculate that the name “Essential Consultants” was deemed a less conspicuous alternative to the original entity.)

And then, at some point on the same day that Stormy threatens to call of the settlement, the Trump campaign makes four payments to Trump-owned businesses. Although, as usual, there is a regular stream of disbursements from the campaign to the Trump organization during this time period, these four payments, when combined with a fifth and final disbursement to a Trump-owned business that was made on October 25th, total $129,999.72 – 28 cents shy of the exact total of the settlement payment owed to Stormy Daniels.

The four payments made on Oct. 17th are as follows:

Three of these payments (for $13,431.88, $79,043.94, and $18,731.90) are reported in Trump’s pre-general 2016 report filed on Oct. 27, 2016. One of the disbursements (for $18,731.90) is reported later, in Trump’s post-general 2017 filed on Dec. 8, 2016.

Oct. 25, 2016
The fifth and final of the disbursement in the series adding up to $129,999.72 is made by the Trump campaign.

Oct. 26, 2016
At 4:15pm, Cohen receives an email from First Republic Bank, confirming that “the funds” have been deposited into a specific checking account.
Cohen then forwards the email to his personal email account, and then forwards it from his personal account to Stormy’s attorney, without comment.

Oct. 27, 2016
According to the Washington Post article, additional email traffic between Cohen and Davidson takes place to confirm that the $130,000 payment has been successfully transmitted to Davidson’s trust account.

Oct. 28, 2016
Stormy signs the settlement agreement, as does Michael Cohen, though he signs as EC, LLC, both as its representative and its counsel.

In the copies of the settlement and the Side Letter that have been publicly released, there is no signature for David Dennison, a.k.a. Donald Trump.

So that’s the relevant background, which brings us back to my tweet on the Trump campaign disbursements. Based on the disbursements itemized in the Trump campaign’s finance reports, which you can obtain from the FEC’s website, in the eight day period between Oct. 17th, when Cohen was informed by Stormy’s attorney that the deal was off due to nonpayment of the $130K settlement, and Oct. 26th, when the bank emailed Cohen to confirm that the settlement funds had been deposited in an account, there were five disbursements from the Trump campaign to Trump-owned businesses that total $129,999.72, or almost the exact amount of the settlement payment that Cohen needed to come up with.

The Stormy Disbursements: A Possible Scenario

If these five disbursements – let’s call them “the Stormy disbursements” for simplicity’s sake – are in fact the source of the Stormy settlement payment, there needs to be an explanation of how that money moved from the Trump campaign to the trust account of Stormy’s attorney. Based on the above timeline, here is my interpretation of what may have occurred here, based on the currently known facts.

In the fall of 2016, Cohen and Davidson negotiated an agreement in principle to buy Stormy’s silence (as well as the copyright for the images Trump texted to Stormy… and no you probably shouldn’t think too much on what that might mean, or you’ll regret it). In exchange for a mutual release of claims, and a payment of $130,000 to be wired to Stormy’s attorney, Stormy would agree to keep all information falling under the general header of “Trump’s affair with a porn star” a secret, as well as to hand over all evidence documenting that affair.

In order to keep Trump’s involvement in the settlement (and the affair) as secret as possible, the settlement agreement was drafted as a sort of complicated shell game, in which the document purporting to be the settlement agreement would contain all the terms, but would not identify either Stormy or Trump as its parties. A side letter confirming their identities as parties to the agreement would then be executed, and locked away as attorneys’ eyes only material.

On September 30, 2016, Cohen created Resolution Consultants, LLC, with the apparent intention to use it as the vehicle through which the settlement payment could be transmitted to Stormy. By early October, a draft settlement agreement had also been prepared and circulated among the parties. At some point, Stormy took a photo of the initial draft of the Side Letter, and sent it to the reporter at Slate. That draft contained a few differences from the final version that was ultimately drafted, such as the (mistaken?) use of “DAVID DELUCIA” as a pseudonum for Trump, as well as specifying that payment was to be made through “RCI,” a.k.a. Resolution Consultants.

But at some point in mid-October, things began to fall apart. Perhaps a payment deadline was missed, perhaps Cohen was acting shadier than normal, but at any rate something tipped off Stormy’s attorney, Keith Davidson, who began to grow wary of whether Trump, via Cohen, was truly acting in good faith, and whether the settlement payment would ever be made. On October 12th, Davidson sent the “We good?” email to Cohen, to check in on the settlement’s status, and Cohen used the Yom Kippur excuse in his reply to explain why no payment had yet been made. This suggests that the Trump Organization itself was involved in some way, and Trump Organization action would be required to effectuate the payment – otherwise, Cohen’s attempt to use the holiday as an excuse makes less sense.

But it would quickly become apparently that Yom Kippur was not the actual cause of the settlement’s delay, because several days would go by and still no payment would be be made to Stormy’s attorney. At this point, it’s not clear why Cohen did not transmit the $130K as agreed. It could be that Cohen/Trump had never actually intended to pay Stormy at all – that their intent all along had been to stall and delay Stormy until after the election, at which point it would be too late for her story to make a difference. Or perhaps Cohen/Trump really had intended to carry out the deal, had wanted to make the $130K payment if they were able, but they were blocked in their attempts to make the payment by unknown hurdles.

Either way, Davidson was not impressed with the delay. Finally, on October 17, 2016, Stormy’s attorney threw down the ultimatum: get Stormy her money by the end of the day, or else Trump’s affair with the porn star is going to be top of the hour news on every cable news show in America.

So now Trump’s Mr. Fixer was desperate. There was no more room for stalling, no more room for delay. He needed to find a way to credibly reassure Davidson that payment would be forthcoming, and he needed to do so quickly. Based on Davidson’s emails, Cohen needed to find a solution before the close of business that day, or else it would be too late.

Most likely, there were further exchanges between Cohen and Davidson on the Oct. 17th. Cohen must have wrote Davidson an email, or had a call with him, and said something along the lines of, “Look, the money is coming, for real this time, I promise. Trump is good for the hush money, it’s just taken a bit longer than expected, that’s all.” But by this point, words would not have been enough – Davidson likely would have wanted some kind of tangible assurance that, yes, payment really was going to be made soon.

Given that Stormy did not go public, it would appear that, one way or another, Cohen succeeded that day in convincing Davidson not to call off the deal right then and there, which would have bought him (and Trump) a little more time. But only a little. One way or another, Cohen still needed to get the settlement money together fast. So here’s the $130K question: how exactly did Cohen get the money?

Here are some possible options Cohen had:

1. Pay the $130K himself. Ahahahahaha no. No. Never did Cohen intend to bear the cost of this payment himself, and he wasn’t even going to temporarily bear the cost either, if he could at all avoid it. (Cohen has recently claimed that he obtained the $130K through a home line of credit, but the only universe that could have occurred in was if it was a desperate attempt at a temporary bridge. Cohen’s self-serving statements in this respect should also not be taken at face value.)
2. Have Trump personally pay the $130K. Too risky. There is no way of paying the settlement out of Trump’s personal accounts that would allow Trump to plausibly deny any knowledge of the settlement negotiations.
3. Have the Trump Organization pay the $130K. Maybe, but this option carries its own risks. A Trump Org payment may not necessarily impute Trump’s direct knowledge of the transaction, but $130K isn’t the kind of rounding error a company is likely to miss. To explain the money going out, Cohen needs to explain first where the money was coming in.
4. Have the Trump Campaign pay the $130K. There are risks here too, but this might make more sense in some respects. After all, there is this big pool of money just sitting there, and being paid out in large amounts to all kinds of recipients every day. And the whole point of that money is to use in helping Trump get elected. And – let’s be real here – although proving intent in a court of law is another beast all together, as a practical matter, we can all agree that helping Trump get elected was the whole purpose of the Stormy settlement.

One available option to Cohen – and the option he may have chosen – was to use a combination of the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization in a way that effectively amounted to his own in-house money laundering operation. Because the campaign and the company are (in theory) two entirely separate entities, doing business at pseudo-arm’s length. The Trump campaign already had an established pattern of making disbursements to the Trump Organization at regular intervals, and those disbursements were for legitimate services and often fairly large in their total dollar amount. Hypothetically speaking, if you were a money launderer, this might seem like a pretty sweet set up. There’s no need to explain where the money is coming from, because the Trump campaign has plenty of money that was legitimately obtained through donations, and explaining where the money is going out is easy, because you also control the entity that is requesting and receiving the payments. You can have the Trump Organization charge the Trump campaign whatever price you feel like, give or take a 100% markup, and the Trump campaign isn’t going to complain about it. And, as an extra bonus just to make everything even better, the underlying transactions are for large-tickets items with an inherently amorphous real value. Sure, event services have a ballpark range in price, but if you charge $28K for an event, who’s to say that objectively there is no basis for charging anything more than $16K?

So in a perfect world, what Cohen should have done is divide up the $130K intended for Stormy, and then transmitted it from the campaign to the Trump Organization as a nearly invisible surcharge on top of the Trump Org’s existing invoices to the Trump campaign. So that $20,000 invoice the Trump Org is planning to issue to the campaign for hosting that Trump rally at Doral? Make it $40,000 instead. Heck, maybe make it $50,000, it’s not like anyone is going to question an extra $10K when it comes to luxury resort event hosting. You still want to try to keep it superficially plausible, but you have some flexibility there. So you keep on like that, adding on a bit of padding to the invoices from the Trump Org to the Trump campaign, until that padding totals the needed number – in this case, $130K.

But in order to transmit the $130K through inflated-but-otherwise-legitimate invoices, you first need to have some otherwise-legitimate-invoices to inflate.

And this is why the disbursements from the Trump campaign to the Trump Organization that began on October 17th look so significant. Because Cohen was not in a perfect world, and Cohen did not have the time it would take for enough legitimate invoices to roll through to cover all of the $130K. Stormy needed that money now, within days or perhaps a week at the very most, or else the whole game would be lost.

So Cohen was desperate, and quite possibly out of other options. Based on the previous delays in getting payments to Stormy, there’s a good chance Cohen had already explored other routes at that point for getting the money to Stormy, but had not been able to find a suitable way of doing so.

Which is why it is plausible that, on Oct. 17, 2016, Michael Cohen might have done something very, very stupid: created fake invoices for the Trump Organization to submit to the Trump campaign to cover the amount that Cohen needed to pay to Stormy. (For the record, it probably wouldn’t have even taken desperation for Cohen to have done something this stupid, and if you need further proof of this, then I would like to submit this Esquire article as Exhibit A.).

The available evidence is consistent with a scenario along these lines occurring. Because on October 17th, the Trump campaign made four large-ticket disbursements to the Trump Organization, and on October 25th the Trump campaign made another disbursement that just happened to round out the total to within 28 cents of $130,000. And then, on October 26th, Cohen suddenly came up with the $130,000 he needed to pay Stormy.

Just a Coincidence?

One reasonable question people have raised in response to my tweets about the Trump campaign disbursements is whether this might all just be some kind of crazy random coincidence. Perhaps this is the kind of thing where, although the result might look surprising on the surface, in reality the result is something you might statistically expect to find given the data being looked at. After all, the five disbursements that total $130K are not the only disbursements that were made by the Trump campaign to the Trump organization during the time of the negotiations between Stormy and Trump. There are other ways in which these disbursements can be combined, and different amounts they might add up to.

So, could the fact these five payments equal $130K just all be a coincidence? Some kind of meaningless statistical quirk?

I am not a stats person, and I am in no way qualified to give any sort of mathematical analysis of this question. Luckily, a lot of people who are qualified to do so have become interested in the question too, and they’ve come up with ways of modeling the probability of the “Stormy disbursements” being a coincidental result.

But before getting into that, I’d like to address one issue I’ve seen raised a few times now: that these disbursements are not significant because they occur alongside other, non-significant disbursements. This claim, if true, would essentially make it impossible for money laundering to ever be detected, because hiding a stream of money laundering payments buried in a larger stream of legitimate payments is kind of the whole point. In fact, it would probably be more surprising if there were no “normal” disbursements from the Trump campaign to the Trump Org during the 8-day period at issue here, because it was rare for more than a few days to go by without some kind of Trump campaign-Trump Org disbursement being made. Throughout all of 2015 and 2016, there was a steady stream of payments being made out to the Trump Organization for various items: hotel stays, event planning, event facilities, meeting expenses, restaurant services, rent for office space, rent for other kinds of real estate undefined in the campaign finance reports, and so on.

In the relevant date range here, from October 17, 2016 (the date the payment vehicle LLC was created) to October 25, 2016 (the day before Cohen got the confirmation email that the deposit had been made in what is presumed to be EC LLC’s bank account), there were a total of eight disbursements made by the Trump campaign to the Trump Organization. These disbursements are listed below, with the five disbursements that make up the $130K in blue, with the other three in yellow. (Note that the possible “Stormy disbursements” constitute every large Trump campaign-Trump Org disbursement that occurred on October 17th, and excludes only what appears to be a one-night hotel room fee for Trump’s New York hotel. There were no additional big-ticket items on the 17th that could’ve been used as the basis for an inflated invoice, if Cohen was trying to go that route.)

And here is where we get back to the math. Given that the $130K total in payments includes some but not all of the disbursements in that time period, what are the odds of the relevant disbursement records coincidentally matching the amount of the settlement paid to Stormy at that time?

The answer is “very bad.”

Will Stancil and his brother Benn Stancil (co-founder of Mode Analytics) took a crack at modeling the probability of the “Stormy disbursements” being the result of chance, and wrote up their findings in an article here:

To explore whether these payments are worth investigating further, we have approached the question from another angle. Instead of examining the individual payments forensically, we have instead focused on the rather close match between the summed payments ($129,999.72) and the $130,000 Daniels payoff. It struck us as fairly unlikely that, by chance alone, so few payments would sum to such a precise figure.

In order to investigate these suspicions, we developed 10,000 sets of simulated Trump campaign payments. Each set contained 10 randomly generated payments. We then searched each of those sets for the combination of payments with the total closest to $130,000.

The simulation confirmed that it is extremely unlikely that, by random chance alone, a set of payments near a specific date would almost equal $130,000.

For each of the 10,000 sets, we generated a “closeness” value — the difference between their “best match” and $130,000. For instance, if the “best match” was $130,014.29, the “closeness” value would be $14.29.

Across 10,000 sets of simulated payments, the 99.9th percentile of closeness was $0.24. The actual degree of closeness in the real-life Trump campaign finance records is $0.28. In other words, out of every one thousand simulated payment sets, only one contained a combination of payments as close to $130,000 as the real-life payments made in the week preceding Oct. 25th.

The Stancils also ran a more conservative model, which was more generous in assumptions about how large the data set might have been (i.e., to represent disbursements selected over a longer range of time). Even by making the available time period more generous, however, the odds of an amount close to the Stormy payout amount coincidentally appearing are still very low:

To ensure that slightly altering our assumptions would not dramatically change these findings, we also tested a slightly more conservative model, in which 10,000 sets of 15 payments were examined. To keep the model computationally feasible, we restricted the output to the closest combination of six payments generated by each set.

In this model, the actual observed combination of $129,999.72 falls somewhere between the 98th and 99th percentile of closeness. In other words, while the observed outcome is considerably more likely under these very generous assumptions than under the normal assumptions, it is still quite unlikely overall. The output of both models are in the tables below.

I also heard from Zack Dennis – whose experience in combinatorics comes in part from his work on keyboard replacement methods over at asetniop.com – also got curious about the probabilities involved here, and emailed me to summarize the calculations he’d run to predict the probability of the “Stormy disbursements,” based on Trump Campaign to Trump Organization disbursements 2015-2016. He took a slightly different approach than the Stancils did (who were a bit more generous in their underlying assumptions), but got a similar result.

Zack examined the question in two ways. First, given all the disbursements from Trump campaign to Trump Org, how many random combinations of 8 disbursements contain a set which can add up to $130K? And second, given the chronological list of disbursements, how many times did the Trump campaign make 12 chronological disbursements to the Trump organization, from which 12 disbursement some combination of disbursements can add up to $130K?

For the first question, here is how Zack explained his model to me:

Imagine you have a data set of four numbers [1,2,3,4].  How many different ways can these numbers combine as combinations of two or more, where order doesn’t matter?

[1,2] = 3

[1,3] = 4

[1,4] = 5

[2,3] = 5

[2,4] = 6

[3,4] = 7

[1,2,3] = 6

[1,2,4] = 7

[1,3,4] = 8

[2,3,4] = 9

[1,2,3,4] = 10

That’s a total of eleven different combinations. Let’s say you’re interested in all the possible ways these numbers might add up to 7.  There are two possible combinations: [3,4] and [1,2,4].  That’s two out of eleven.

Now imagine instead of using the original data set of [1,2,3,4] we use the *entire* set of entries in the FEC spreadsheet that you posted starting from the beginning: [$1380.54, $9583.33, $37993.04, $3240.96, $9583.33…] and perform the same process:

[$1380.54, $9583.33] = $10963.87

[$1380.54, $37993.04] = $39373.58

…and so on.

What we’re looking for here are combinations that add up to totals close to $130,000.  In order to simplify the calculation process, I added a few conditions:

1. I used a total range of one dollar – from $129,999.50 to $130,000.50 – as a target. Your original calculation was within that range at $129,999.72.

2. I removed all amounts that were exact multiples of $1000.00 – $15k, $9k, $6k, etc. It would be too easy to “cherry pick” a series of these numbers to hit exactly $130,000.00, so we’re not going to consider them (plus, none of the numbers in your original data set were exact multiples – we’re trying to replicate the odds of what you did happening by chance). Plus, it saves some time computationally.

3. I considered up to eight separate numbers per combination (i.e. [a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h] = total). Building bigger subsets would take too long to process – I wrote my code in javascript, which is not particularly fast, and it took around 12 hours to process.

The total number of possible combinations was 172,325,161,239 (that’s 172 trillion).

The total number of combinations that fit the $130k range was 933,281.

That works out to a percentage of 0.00054%

So based on those numbers, the odds of *randomly* finding any batch of up to eight entries in the spreadsheet that add up to a number that’s approximately as close to your calculation are 1 in 18,464.

Now, the first question Zack was looking at considered combinations of any 8 disbursements, regardless of when they were made during the campaign. So each set could include disbursements made anywhere from April 2015 to December 2016. Which, as you might have realized, isn’t entirely analogous to the question at issue here with the “Stormy disbursements,” because any money laundering transactions of the sort I’ve theorized about here would have occurred during a defined window in time, not randomly throughout the entire campaign. So Zack also turned to look at a second question: using only chronological sets of disbursements (i.e., sets of 12 disbursements that occurred one after another), how many sets of chronological disbursements are there which contain disbursements adding up to within a dollar of $130K?

The answer: exactly one. The only disbursements that fit this criteria are the five “Stormy disbursements.” And those disbursements just happen to have taken place within the exact 9-day period during which any theoretical money laundering would have had to occur.

The Possible Origins of the Stormy Disbursements

From a mathematical point of view, the odds of the “Stormy disbursements” occurring by chance are very, very low. By my reckoning, that should be sufficient on its own to warrant further questioning here. But it also does not prove that any misconduct occurred, because although the odds of this happening by chance are pretty low, by definition even low probability events have to happen once in a while. So the statistical models alone can’t rule out the possibility that the coincidence of the “Stormy disbursements” matching the Stormy settlement payment is just a result of winning the bad luck lottery here.

Which means we need to look at what we know about the Stormy disbursements beyond their simple dollar amounts. While any conclusive answer here would require access to financial records that would be impossible for me to obtain, what I can do is evaluate whether, based on existing public records, any of the “Stormy disbursements” can be shown to be legitimate campaign disbursements. In other words, whether any of those five disbursements totaling $130K can be convincingly explained away as real expenses paid by the Trump campaign for real services provided by the Trump Organization.

And we at least have an idea of what to look for here to try and show that these transactions were legitimate. Because if the “Stormy disbursements” were in fact merely a vehicle used to transfer $130K from the Trump campaign to Trump Org, then they must be either one of two things: (1) payments for fictitious services that were never rendered to the Trump campaign, or (2) duplicate payments for real services that the Trump campaign received, but should not have been paid for twice. In other words: are there real expenses that can be tied to the Stormy disbursements, and is the reason to thing the Stormy disbursements were not duplicate payments for those expenses?

Unfortunately, because of the limited data available from FEC reports, we’re not able to conclusively identify the events that any Trump campaign-Trump Org disbursement may have been associated with, but based on the larger pattern of disbursements from the Trump campaign to Trump Org, there are reasons to suspect that the Stormy disbursements may lack a credible explanation.

First though, a couple caveats about the limits of using the FEC records in an attempt to correlate campaign disbursements with actual campaign events:

• Not all Trump campaign events at Trump-owned properties have associated campaign disbursements, suggesting either that on at least some occasions the Trump Organization did not charge the Trump campaign for events, or that payment for these events was not identified obviously in the disbursement records for whatever reason.
• Matching up a particular Trump campaign disbursements with a particular Trump campaign event at a Trump property will not always be possible, as there is no definitive list of “Trump events” to compare against, and it’s theoretically possible that an otherwise inexplicable disbursement is associated with some private Trump event that was not publicized enough to leave a record.

This all makes analyzing the nature of these disbursements difficult, and prevents me from reaching any firm conclusions here based only on the FEC records. Though, on the other hand, it is worth noting that, from a money launderer’s perspective, this inherent ambiguity in the data is something of a bonus. Yes, the campaign disclosure requirements do remove an element of secrecy, but not enough of one on their own to allow for any conclusions that money laundering occurred.

Given these caveats, then, what can we conclude here about the five “Stormy disbursements” based on publicly available information?

The Trump National Golf Club Washington DC Disbursement ($8,544.00)

Let’s start with the Oct. 17th disbursement of $8,544.00 to the Trump National Golf Club Washington DC, out near Sterling, Virginia. This is probably the easiest one to start with, because Trump’s DC golf club was not a hot spot on the campaign trail, which means there are only a few transactions for us to contend with. In fact, I could only find a single Trump campaign event that took place there: an October 25th event that was headlined by Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

The event was a relatively small one, and was hosted by “Diverse Communities in Virginia Supporting Trump.”

It was supposed to have been preceded earlier in the day by a campaign rally in Loudoun County, but the event was cancelled as Lara “was stuck in traffic” and could not make it. She did make the Trump National Golf Club DC event, though, and in her remarks to the group, the future president’s daughter-in-law urged those present to disregard anything the media said about Trump: “Don’t believe anything the media tells you. They’re all liars. And now not only do we know they’re liars, we know that they’ve been in Hillary Clinton’s back pocket the whole time.”

Which means there was a genuine event that took place at the Trump National Golf Club DC, and that event could provide a possible explanation for the source of the $8,544.00 disbursement. Although the Trump campaign’s regular practice was to pay the Trump Organization after an event at a Trump property, that does not mean there could not have been occasions on which the Trump campaign made disbursements to the Trump Org in advance.

But there’s a catch: the $8,544.00 disbursement is not the only disbursement that was made to Trump National Golf Club DC in October of 2016. Here is a list of all the disbursements that were made to Trump’s DC golf club in the 2015-2016 campaign (with the possible “Stormy disbursement” marked in blue):

There were two large disbursements made to the club in all: one for $8,544 on Oct. 17th, and one for $11,600 a couple weeks later, on Oct. 31st. Both payments are within the ballpark for what it would cost someone to host a Tuesday all-evening wedding with full buffet dinner at the Trump National Golf Club DC, which means either could have been issued in connection with Lara’s event (though, her event was only two hours and just hors d’oeuvres were served, so the Trump campaign’s payments would seem to have been a bit generous). Which means if the $8,544 payment was a prepayment to Lara Trump’s event, there must necessarily have been two campaign events that took place at Trump’s DC golf club in the weeks before the election, both of which cost approximately $10,000. I have yet to find evidence of a second event that could explain these charges.

Trump International Hotel Washington DC Disbursement ($13,431.88)

Next up is the Oct. 17th disbursement of $13,431.88 to Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, a.k.a. the Old Post Office building. In the FEC reports, this disbursement is identified as payments for “FACILITY RENTAL/CATERING SERVICES.”

This payment is tricky to nail down because of the sheer volume of activity in DC, and at Trump’s DC hotel, that took place during the campaign. Additionally, there are more reports of campaign events and appearances at the Trump International Hotel than there are disbursements to it, suggesting that not all campaign activity at the hotel was compensated by the campaign.

Additionally, the campaign at times appears to have made indirect disbursements for events at Trump properties. For example, the campaign did not appear to make any direct payments to the Trump International Hotel in DC in connection with the national security meeting hosted there on March 31, 2016, but the Managing Director for Trump’s DC hotel and the General Manager for Trump’s Chicago hotel both appeared to receive payments directly from the campaign in connection with the event:

Which means any kind of direct 1:1 matching between campaign events and campaign disbursements for the DC hotel is probably not possible based on available data. However, if we look only at disbursements made directly to the hotel itself, in total, there were seven disbursements during the campaign (with the possible “Stormy disbursement” marked in blue):

That first payment on January 12th can be disregarded for the moment, since it could not be connected to any events taking place in the weeks before the election. Which means, based on the campaign’s known events, the best possible explanations for the October 17th disbursement of $13,431.88 is likely in connection with one of two possible events:

• The Sept. 16, 2016 “birther” press conference/hotel informercial; or
• The Oct. 26, 2016 hotel event that Trump appeared at

As an initial matter, if the $13,431.88 was in fact in connection with the Oct. 26th event, then that might mean the payment wasn’t connected with Stormy, but the Trump campaign would still have a problem here. Because that event was not a campaign event – it was a ribbon cutting/grand opening ceremony for the hotel – and Trump was in attendance not as a candidate but as the business owner. As such. campaign funds should not have been used in connection with the event. (Notably, this would also apply to the $956.08 lodging charge on Oct. 27th, which looks suspiciously like a charge for someone’s hotel room for the night following the grand opening ceremony…)

The Sept. 16, 2016 Press Conference at Trump’s DC Hotel

So excluding the Oct. 26th ribbon cutting, that would leave the infamous “birther” press conference on Sept. 16, 2016 as a possible explanation for the Oct. 17th “facility rental/catering services” disbursement in the amount of $13,431.88. But once again, as with the Trump National Golf Club DC, we’ve got a problem: there are later disbursements for similar values that can’t be explained by known campaign events. Two of them, in fact. One on Nov. 2nd, for $9,245.93, and one on Nov. 14th, for $12,265.61. I think it’s fair to assume that one of these three $9K+ payments was for the Sept. 16th event, but there is no way to determine which one. Nor is there a ready explanation for what the remaining two would have been for. Although it’s possible the Oct. 17th disbursement was legitimate, it could equally be a duplicate payment for either the Nov. 2nd or Nov. 14th disbursements, and based on available data there would be no way to tell.

Trump International Hotel & Tower New York Disbursement ($10,248.00)

This disbursement was the final one in the “Stormy disbursements” series, and the only one of the five disbursements to have occurred on Oct. 25th.

There is also not all that much that can be said about this disbursement, because there just isn’t much to go on in terms of linking it to any known Trump campaign activities. The charge is, presumably, for people affiliated with the Trump campaign for their lodging at Trump International Hotel & Tower. This was a frequent occurrence during the campaign, so obviously something that happened with regularity (at least from August to November), and based on available data, there is no apparent way to evaluate its legitimacy. However, the Oct. 25th disbursement does stand out in one respect – it is the single largest disbursement (below, in blue) that the campaign ever made to Trump’s New York Hotel.

So once again, whether this disbursement was legitimate or not is not something that can be determined based on available data. Invoices for all Trump International Hotel & Tower disbursements would be required to ascertain whether there is in fact an underlying campaign charge associated with it.

Trump International Hotel Las Vegas Disbursements ($18,731.90 & $79,043.94)

Finally, that brings us to the fourth and fifth – and most suspicious – of the “Stormy disbursements,” and that’s the two disbursements to Trump’s Vegas hotel for $18,731.90 and $79,043.94. Both disbursements took place on Oct. 17th (though only the $79K disbursement would be correctly reported in Trump’s October 27th FEC campaign finance report; the $18K disbursement would not be reported until Trump’s December 8, 2016 filing). Here all the disbursements made by the Trump campaign to Trump’s Vegas hotel, with the two “Stormy disbursements” marked in blue.

These two disbursements are notable for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most obvious one is the sheer dollar figure involved. The combined total is $97,775.84, but even standing by itself, the $79,043.94 disbursements was at that time the single largest disbursement the Trump campaign made to a Trump hotel. There were larger disbursement made to hotels for lodging during the course of the campaign, but only if you count the campaign’s July four-day stay at the Cleveland Westin during the Republican Convention in July, and the election night event at the Manhattan Hilton. There was also a campaign rally that the Trump campaign decided to throw last minute after the first debate — and which the campaign didn’t even organize until the morning of, which on the way to Hofstra University for the debate — and the results of that last minute scramble cost the campaign $97,419.95. So yes, these things can add up, and lodging costs are a significant expense for campaigns. But were they significant enough to explain the $98K disbursements on October 17th?

There are two possible events that might explain the Oct. 17th charges:

• The third presidential debate in Las Vegas on Oct. 19th
• A Vegas campaign rally on Oct. 30th

The Oct. 30th rally is a very poor fit for the Oct. 17th disbursement, and I do not believe it provides a viable explanation for those expenses. First of all, the Oct. 30th rally wasn’t even at Trump’s hotel. It was at the Venetian, owned by Trump-supporter Sheldon Adelson. Nor were there any follow-up events in Vegas that might explain the additional charges to Trump’s hotel, because after the 11am rally at the Venetian, Trump left town for two other rallies that day, in Colorado and New Mexico. And we know that after the Oct. 30th rally, the campaign paid the Venetian (or rather its sister hotel) for the rally – to the tune of $114,246.06.

So a total of $214K, for a rally that lasted maybe a couple hours? That seems extreme even by Trump’s standards, and not a particularly plausible explanation. Which leaves the other possibility: that the Oct. 17th charges were prepayment for the Oct. 19th debate in Vegas. After all, Trump did stay at his hotel while there — something he even brought up in the debate. Although the $100K price tag was described as “lodging” on the FEC reports, this may have been in error. Although lodging alone could not possibly account for the size of the disbursement, a campaign event plus housing a few dozen staffers in the hotel’s priciest rooms could do it.

And there was a campaign event the night of the debate. Well. Sort of. There was this, anyway:

Although, according to reports from attendees, the whole things sounds like it was a slightly sad affair.

 “We’ve got Diamond and Silk, what do you think Hillary’s got?” Boris Epshteyn asked me. “Come on, admit it, Republicans are more fun!”

Epshteyn is a senior adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and late Wednesday evening, after the debate, he stood at the head of a long table in the half-empty restaurant of the Trump International Hotel here, drinking and eating jovially with the rest of the staff. …

Next to Epshteyn was Kellyanne Conway, the campaign manager who sipped red wine and ate carrot sticks, and next to her Rebekah Mercer, the deep-pocketed Republican donor who looks like she could be related to Sarah Palin (though Palin was in the “spin room” after the debate, she wasn’t at the party). The two women whispered and hugged.

While $100K seems like a hefty sum for such a sparsely attended event at Trump’s own hotel restaurant, I can’t say for certain that it would not have cost that much. (Although I will say definitively that if it did cost that much, Trump was ripping himself off here.) Still, this possible explanation runs into the same sort of problems as the other disbursements. First, it would be a prepayment, made in advance of the event itself, which just is not the typical way the Trump campaign operated with regard to Trump Org expenses. And second, although the debate might explain the Oct. 17th payments, that leaves us with more disbursements to the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas than there are events to explain them, which in turn leaves us with the question of how to explain all the other disbursements to Trump’s Vegas hotel.

Because following both the Oct. 19th debate and the Oct. 30th rally at the Venetian, there were, in all, a total of $174,343.58 in additional disbursements to Trump’s Vegas hotel. In fact, one of those disbursements – an Oct. 25th disbursement for lodging, for $16K – would, on the surface, appear much more consistent with usual campaign lodging expenses. But if the lodging expense was not for the Oct. 19th debate, what was it for? And if the Oct. 17th payments really were prepayments for either the Oct. 19th debate or the Oct. 30th rally, what on earth then could be the source of that $150K in total disbursements in late November?

And wait, there’s another complication here. The Trump campaign is not the only entity spending money at Trump properties. In fact, for the Vegas hotel, there were four other disbursements in October and November – three from the Trump Victory PAC and one from the RNC:

That means we have an additional $67,545.30 in spending at Trump’s Vegas hotel being disbursed by Trump-supporting causes in the weeks before the election. And while perhaps I have no conclusive evidence to refute it, based on the public reports of Trump’s campaign activities that I’ve been able to find, I just don’t think I am going to be able to be convinced that the Trump events in Las Vegas in the 2.5 week run up to the election are sufficient to explain the total of $347,074.95 in disbursements to Trump’s business – and that amount is before you even get to any payments associated with the actual rallies he had there!

All of which is a long way of saying this: no, the available records cannot prove that there was no legitimate basis for the “Stormy disbursements,” but neither can they provide any basis from which we can conclude they were in fact legitimate expenses. Given the statistical unlikeliness of the “Stormy disbursements,” the lack of a documented explanation for those expenses means further investigation is warranted.

The only way to verify whether these disbursements were issued as compensation for genuine campaign costs would be to review all the underlying invoices and payment records, to confirm both (1) the invoices exist for an actual service provided by the Trump Organization, and (2) the Oct. 17-25th were not duplicate payments for real Trump campaign events that had already been (or would be) paid by the Trump campaign under a different invoice. And for that to happen, either both the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization will have to voluntarily release records to verify these transactions, or else someone with the ability to compel production will have to decide to seek them.

The Trump Organization’s Controls

Even aside from the “Stormy disbursements,” there is a bigger story here that, to date, I do not believe has been adequately explored or reported on. From a compliance perspective, the Trump campaign’s ongoing use of the Trump Organization as a vendor creates a serious corruption risk, and I’ve seen no indication of controls in place, in either the campaign or the Trump Organization, that could have adequately mitigated the inherent risk created by the commingling of the two organizations. That inherent risk, when combined with the Trump Organization’s lengthy record of eschewing traditional notions of corporate compliance in both its domestic and foreign operations, creates the perfect conditions for misdirection of funds to occur.

That the Trump campaign and Trump Organization did not have sufficient controls in place can be demonstrated here by a few examples which, presumably, did not involve corrupt intent, but which nevertheless show that the way Trump ran his campaign made it possible for the unwarranted event charges to be approved and go undetected for months on end. To start with, let’s take Trump’s Doral property. Trump had lots of events there over the course of the campaign, and disbursements of greater than $1,000 were common. And, at least once, the Trump campaign disbursed over $10,000 to Trump’s Doral business for services that were never rendered.

To show what happened, the following is a list of all disbursements made to Doral from that Oct. 28th through the end of 2016:

In this case, the problem with the disbursements is fairly obvious, because two of the payments are for the identical amount of $11,541.20, an obvious sign that there could have been a double payment. And yet, it would not be until four months later that someone discovered the error. Here are all of the records for the disbursement at issue:

We don’t know exactly what happened here, but clearly at some point in Nov. 2016, someone signed off on a payment to Trump National Doral that was not owed and should not have been paid, and the controls in place were insufficient to stop the transaction or detect the problem. But to show what a problem this situation is, just imagine what would have happened had the second payment to Doral not been for the exact amount as the previous payment, but had instead been for, say, $16,841.96. A totally plausible amount based on disbursement patterns. And a totally plausible expense, given the apparently frequent campaign events that took place at Doral. Based on FEC records, it would be impossible to conclude one way or another if the expense was legitimate. And, moreover, it is impossible to know if the duplicate payment would ever have been detected, without the tip-off of the amounts matching exactly.

And that’s not the only time in the last months of the campaign that such a mistake occurred. Heck, the campaign twice accidentally overcharged itself for hundreds of dollars’ worth of Trump-brand water bottles that later had to be reversed:

Or take an example from another Nevada campaign event, this time in Reno, at the Sparks Convention Center:

Here, the mistakes were fairly obvious from the FEC filings, and were later corrected. But take the Sparks Convention Center example; what it does show is that a $27K check could be sent out from the Trump campaign when it should not have been, and then go undetected for over four months.

The wrongful disbursements discussed above appear to have been accidental, perhaps the result of some paperwork snafu, but this pattern strongly suggests that it would have been possible for someone in the Trump campaign with access to the pocketbook to have intentionally disbursed campaign funds for campaign events that never happened. Moreover, we also have reason to believe that someone disbursing campaign funds as payment for non-existent campaign expenses could have been able to do so without being immediately detected – because in the accidental disbursements discussed above, in which the duplicate payment were fairly obvious just from the FEC reports, the errors still went undetected until long after the campaign was over and Trump was well into his presidency.

Moreover, the question of whether any unwarranted disbursement might have been made intentionally – of whether the Trump Organization might have knowingly engaged in money laundering with respect to Trump campaign funds – is far from some kind of inflammatory or scurrilous accusation. Trump Organization’s connection to money laundering is a proven fact, many times over, and that’s even before you start looking at the real estate deals in Azerbaijan, Vancouver, SoHo, Panama, or a dozen other locations. I have no hesitation in stating that the Trump Organization is very familiar with money laundering, and has a long history of associating itself with experienced money launderers. (And if you doubt me, just go ask the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York just how kind Mr. Sater has been to share with them his wealth of knowledge on the subject.)

As for whether money laundering occurred here, I could not disprove beyond a reasonable doubt that some valid explanation for these strange and unlikely payment patterns might exist. Maybe Trump’s campaign operations were wholly legit, and the five “Stormy disbursements” is no more than the false positive equivalent of winning the lottery. Maybe Sam Nunberg was just making things up when he said on one of his many cable news appearances that there had been someone on the campaign who was stealing from it. Maybe there is nothing going on here.

But there are too many red flags present for the legitimacy of these campaign disbursement to be assumed without evidence. I’m willing to be wrong about the five “Stormy disbursements” being suspicious, but I’m not willing to simply assume that a crazy coincidence is the likeliest explanation here, when there exists a series of disbursements that look exactly like what you’d expect to find if someone had, in an act of desperation, engaged in financial shenanigans on Oct. 17, 2016 in a last-ditch effort to come up with $130K so that the porn star Trump had an affair with and who was threatening to go public could be paid off.

Luckily, I suspect Stormy Daniels is going to be all over this, should her suit remain in open court long enough for her to have the chance to look into exactly where Cohen got that $130K from. Which means perhaps we’ll get an answer here after all. So fingers crossed, and best of luck to you, Stormy.

-Susan

It’s been a while since I last got around to writing something for this blog… and also it will be a while longer yet, because I still haven’t gotten around to it. But I did write something for Just Security that’s worth checking out, on why Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony about his phone call with President Trump cannot be true, and what he was trying to hide by changing his story.

From the article:

At the heart of the impeachment inquiry, members of Congress may have been mistakenly led to believe that there were two phone calls between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland in early September—with the second call having the possibility of helping the President’s case. That’s not what happened. There was only one call, and it was highly incriminating.

The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his’ deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.

Sondland has testified there was a call on September 9th in which Trump said there was “no quid pro quo,” but that he wanted President Zelenskyy “to do” the right thing. A close reading of the publicly available evidence shows that the latter call was actually the very one that sent Morrison to the lawyers, and that Ambassador Bill Taylor foregrounded in his written deposition to inform Congress of the quid pro quo.

As this article was in the publication process at Just Security, the Washington Post published a report raising doubts about the existence of the September 9 call. The analysis that follows is consistent with the Post’s report and, among other points, shows why Sondland’s “no quid pro quo” call is in fact  the same as the September 7th call that Morrison reported to NSC lawyers on September 7th.

In interviews with Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper, Lev Parnas made a number of explosive claims. For purposes of the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, however, one of the most critical parts of Parnas’s story has to do with a meeting that took place in Kyiv on May 12, 2019. This May 12 meeting, according to Parnas, was one of two occasions in which, while acting on President Trump’s behalf, he delivered an explicit quid pro quo to Ukrainian officials. The first meeting had been in February, at a meeting with then-President Petro Poroshenko. The second meeting, the one on May 12, occurred in the wake of Rudy Giuliani canceled trip to Ukraine. According to Parnas, on the instructions of Giuliani and Trump, Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman arranged to meet with Sergey Shefir, senior advisor to President-Elect Volodymyr Zelensky. Parnas says that, at this meeting, he delivered a “very harsh message” to Zelensky’s aid: announce the Biden investigations, or else Ukraine would face consequences.

Although the existence of the May 12 meeting has been known about for some time – it was first reported on over two months ago, in November of 2019 – it has received relatively little attention compared to some of Parnas’s other claims. However, the May 12 meeting is significant because of its potential to be corroborated by an extensive documentary record. And, unlike most the documents relevant to the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, the documents that have the power to corroborate Parnas’s claims are outside of the White House’s sole possession and control. In fact, if Parnas’s claims are true, then much of what he has described about the May 12 meeting should be corroborated by records already in the possession of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And, in addition to what the HPSCI already possess, thousands more pages are likely to become available as criminal proceedings against Parnas and his co-defendants continue. Although production is still ongoing, in letters to the court the Government has noted that, so far, it has produced over 100,000 pages of discovery to defendants, including “thousands of pages of materials obtained pursuant to grand jury subpoenas or voluntary requests and full copies of their own email accounts, social media accounts, and device extractions (to the extent available) that were obtained by the Government pursuant to search warrants.”

Although only a fraction of the total record has been made public so far, the documents that are available already provide extensive corroboration for Parnas’s claims about the May 12 meeting. This post will provide a detailed look at the current record, and how it compares to what Parnas has described.

Events Leading up to the May 12 Meeting

The May 12 meeting was a small but important part of President Trump’s scheme to coerce Ukraine into announcing meritless criminal investigations into his political rivals. This scheme – referred to here as “the Ukraine Scheme,” for brevity’s sake – involved numerous actors with overlapping interests in Ukraine, but the primary participants of the May 12 meeting were Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, and Rudy Giuliani. Beginning in at least November 2018, the three men had worked closely together in their efforts to secure an announcement of a Biden investigation from the Ukrainian president. These efforts are documented in the WhatsApp messages obtained by federal investigators from Parnas’s phone, and that were produced by Parnas to the HPSCI in mid-January.

These WhatsApp conversations detail the Ukraine Scheme’s failed efforts in the spring of 2019 to secure the announcement of a Biden investigation. The messages show that, although the May 12 meeting had not been part of the original plan, it became necessary after a series of failures and set-backs had blocked the Ukraine Scheme from establishing a back channel to President-Elect Zelensky.

The Failed Attempt at a Poroshenko Quid Pro Quo

One of the major roadblocks to the Ukraine Scheme’s plans for a Biden investigation was the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. In February, when Parnas first met with then-President Poroshenko to offer a quid pro quo of support in the upcoming election in exchange for the announcement of a Biden election, the first round of the Ukrainian presidential election was only a month away. As a result, due to concerns about the potential domestic political impact, Poroshenko seems to have been unwilling to announce such a politically sensitive investigation at that time. Later on, in early March, members of the Ukraine Scheme arranged for a friendly journalist to interview President Poroshenko, in the hopes of obtaining a public comment on the Bidens from the Ukrainian president. In advance of the interview, Parnas sent over a list of planned questions for President Poroshenko to review, which included the following:

As WhatsApp messages between Parnas and then-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko show, however, the Poroshenko administration rebuffed this request:

If there were plans to have Poroshenko announce the Biden investigation after the Ukrainian election, those plans fell apart when it became clear that President Poroshenko’s odds of winning reelection were grim. On April 21, President Poroshenko was voted out of office, and his opponent, Volodymyr Zelensky, won in a landslide victory with over 73% of the vote.

The Ukraine Scheme had not been caught completely off guard by Zelensky’s election, however. In early April of 2019, when it became clear that Poroshenko was unlikely to win re-election and Zelensky was likely to be the next president of Ukraine, Parnas and Fruman were dispatched on a mission to Israel. This was actually the first of two trips that Parnas and Fruman would make to Israel that month. The second trip – which took place three weeks later on April 23, days after Zelensky’s election – has been widely reported on, and the purpose was for Parnas and Fruman to meet with Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian billionaire who had fled to Israel as a result of his conflicts with President Poroshenko’s administration. Kolomoisky is also a long-standing ally and patron of Zelensky, and was believed to hold substantial influence with the incoming administration.

As Kolomoisky later described in interviews, the purpose of Parnas and Fruman’s second trip to Israel was to develop a back channel of communication with Zelensky, in order to convince the incoming president to announce the Biden investigation:

“Look, there is Giuliani, and there [are] two clowns, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were milking the bull here. They are Giuliani’s clients. … They came here and told us that they would organize a meeting with Zelensky. They allegedly struck a deal with [Prosecutor-general Yuriy] Lutsenko about the fate of this criminal case – Burisma, [former vice president] Biden, meddling in the U.S. election and so on.”

Parnas and Fruman did not receive a warm welcome from Kolomoisky, however:

Fruman and Parnas were introduced to the oligarch by Alexander Levin, another pro-Trump Ukrainian-American businessman, on the pretence that they wanted to talk about their plan to sell gas to Ukraine, Kolomoisky said in an interview.

However, once inside the meeting, the two men told Kolomoisky that they wanted his help getting in touch with Zelensky, in order to help set up a meeting between Giuliani and the president-elect.

Offended, Kolomoisky said, he then stormed out of the meeting.

“I told them I am not going to be a middleman in anybody’s meetings with Zelensky,” Kolomoisky said. “Not for them, not for anybody else. They tried to say something like, ‘Hey, we are serious people here. Giuliani. Trump.’ They started throwing names at me.”

Although Kolomoisky’s comments are presumed to be in reference to Parnas and Fruman’s second Israel trip, the WhatsApp messages confirm that there had in fact been another, earlier trip to Israel, which took place on or about April 3. And, as confirmed by Parnas’s messages another of the scheme’s participants, attorney Victoria Toensing, this first April trip to Israel was also a part of the Ukraine Scheme:

Although the details surrounding Parnas’s and Fruman’s first April trip to Israel have not yet been reported on, Parnas, should he given the opportunity to testify before the Senate, would presumably be able to provide more complete explanation of the pair’s activities there. However, it is probable that the purpose of the first Israel trip, like the second trip, was to meet with Kolomoisky in an effort to develop a backchannel to the likely next president of Ukraine.[1] If that is the case, then the available record would suggest that Parnas and Fruman’s first trip to Israel met with no more success than the second trip did.[2]

Giuliani’s Failed Trip to Ukraine

In the first two weeks following Zelensky’s election, the Ukraine Scheme tried, but failed, to develop a backchannel to the President-Elect. By early May, a new plan was put together: rather than rely on Parnas and Fruman to set up a channel of communication with the incoming administration, Giuliani himself would travel to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky. The trip was scheduled to take place from May 12-15, and, as Giuliani told the New York Times, the explicit purpose of this visit was to convince the incoming Ukrainian president to open a criminal investigation into President Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden:

“I am going to tell [Zelensky] what I know about the people that are surrounding him, and how important it is to do a full, complete and fair investigation.”  . . .

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” he said. “Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

To prepare for Giuliani’s trip, Parnas began reaching out to Ukrainian officials to ask for their help in arranging a meeting between Giuliani and President-Elect Zelensky. In particular, Parnas worked closely with Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs, who had served under the Poroshenko administration, but would remain in office under President Zelensky administration.

Parnas also reached out to Ivan Bakanov, a close ally of Zelensky’s, in an attempt to arrange for a pre-trip call between Giuliani and the President-Elect’s team. Those messages reveal that the incoming Zelensky administration took Parnas seriously enough to ensure that his messages were relayed to Zelensky:

Shortly before Giuliani’s scheduled trip to Ukraine, however, Bakanov suddenly cut off Parnas. His last message – a deleted message, contents unknown – was sent on May 6:

It is possible Bakanov’s decision to cut off communications with Parnas was part of a new strategy adopted by the incoming administration, during a special meeting that President-Elect Zelensky quietly convened on May 7 to discuss how the incoming administration should respond to President Trump’s efforts to pressure Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden:

Volodymyr Zelenskiy gathered a small group of advisers on May 7 in Kyiv for a meeting that was supposed to be about his nation’s energy needs. Instead, the group spent most of the three-hour discussion talking about how to navigate the insistence from Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani for a probe and how to avoid becoming entangled in the American elections, according to three people familiar with the details of the meeting.

On that same day, several members of the Ukraine scheme – including Giuliani, Parnas, Derek Harvey, and John Solomon – had themselves gathered for a meeting at the Trump Hotel in DC, where they discussed their plans to obtain the announcement of a Biden investigation. As Parnas’s exchanges with former Devin Nunes aide Derek Harvey show, Parnas took off for Kyiv the following day:

The plan was for Giuliani to join Parnas in Ukraine four days later, on May 12. In the meantime, Parnas would scout ahead in Kyiv, and work on scheduling a meeting between Giuliani and President-Elect Zelensky.

May 10: Parnas Delivers Giuliani’s letter to the President-Elect

WhatsApp messages show that on May 10, Parnas made plans with Interior Minister Arsen Avakov to meet that afternoon, at approximately 2:30pm, Kyiv time. The apparent purpose of this meeting was for Parnas to pass on a letter, which Avakov could then have delivered to the President-Elect. The letter – which was dated May 10, 2019, and copied to Avakov – was from Giuliani, who identified himself as “private counsel” to President Trump. Giuliani’s letter stressed this point repeatedly, noting that Giuliani “represent[ed] [Trump] as a private citizen, not as President of the United States,” and that, in seeking a meeting with Zelensky, he was acting in his “capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent.” To that end, Giuliani wrote, he was requesting a brief meeting with President-Elect Zelensky on either May 13 or May 14.

Things did not go as planned. Approximately 12 hours after Parnas had delivered Giuliani’s letter to the Ukrainian officials, Giuliani made an appearance on Fox News to announce that he had called off his planned trip to Ukraine, and complained that President-Elect Zelensky was “in the hands of people who are avowed enemies of the [U.S.] President.” The following day, May 11, Giuliani released a more detailed explanation of his reasoning. Canceling the meeting with Zelensky had been necessary, Giuliani claimed, because “the President elect is being advised by people who were very vocal opponents of President Trump,” and “under these circumstances the meeting would have accomplished little and may be in the hands of those who might misrepresent it.”

Contrary to Giuliani’s claims that he was the one who canceled the meeting with Zelensky, however, the WhatsApp exchanges between Giuliani and Parnas suggest an all together different explanation for why the meeting was called off – that it was Zelensky who had refused to meet with Giuliani, and not the other way around.

May 11: Meetings with Lutsenko

After Giuliani’s trip to Kyiv was canceled, the Ukraine Scheme seems to have been scrambling to come up with a new plan. Giuliani, still in the States, made the rounds on cable news to decry the enemies in Zelensky’s cabinet, and talk about how important it was for there to be an investigation into Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Parnas remained in Kyiv and continued with his efforts to connect with President-Elect Zelensky. WhatsApp records from Parnas’s phone show that, on May 11, Parnas was in close contact with Prosecutor General Lutsenko throughout the day. The two of them met up on at least two separate occasions that day, once early that afternoon and once again that evening.

And, in between those two meetings, at 3:24pm Kyiv time, Parnas sent Lutsenko an intriguing series of WhatsApp messages:

Parnas sent Lutsenko the full text of a press release from Giuliani, and instructed Lutsenko to “read [this] to the person you are meeting now.” Although Parnas’s messages don’t identify by name who Lutsenko was meeting with at that time, Lutsenko later told Ukrainian media about the nature of this meeting. These statements from Lutsenko were later included in the whistleblower’s report:

It was President-Elect Zelensky that Parnas was requesting Lutsenko communicate with on his behalf.

WhatsApp messages show that, following Lutsenko’s meeting with Zelensky, Lutsenko and Parnas met up once again – and, presumably, the two of them discussed what had transpired at the meeting with Zelensky. A few hours later, Parnas would send his first WhatsApp message to Sergey Shefir, senior advisor to the President-Elect.

It is not clear how exactly Parnas obtained Shefir’s number, but it seems that, even prior to Parnas’s message, it had already been agreed that Parnas and Shefir would meet. In his message to Shefir, Parnas introduced himself as a “friend of Mayor Giuliani,” and passed along a copy of Giuliani’s letter to Zelensky:

Later that evening, at 9:08pm, Kyiv time, Parnas and Shefir confirmed plans for the two of them to meet the following morning, at the Restaurant Prague:

This meeting would be the May 12 meeting that Parnas spoke of in his interviews with Maddow and Cooper.

May 12: The Meeting at the Restaurant Prague

In his interview with Rachel Maddow, Parnas gave his most detailed account yet of what actually took place at the May 12 meeting:

PARNAS: . . .  Basically, the message that I was supposed – that I gave Sergiy Shefir was a very harsh message. I was told to give it to him in a very harsh way, not in a pleasant way.

MADDOW: Who told you to give it to him a harsh way?

PARNAS: Mayor Giuliani, Rudy, told me after, you know, meeting with the president at the White House. He called me. The message was, it wasn’t just military aid, it was all aid. Basically their relationships would be sour, that he would – that we would stop giving them any kind of aid that –

MADDOW: Unless?

PARNAS: – unless that there was announcement made – it was several things. There were several demands at that point. A, the most important was the announcement of the Biden investigation.

MADDOW: Did you also convey to him that the U.S. government would stop showing support for Mr. Zelensky, that they wouldn’t attend the inauguration? Or that –

. . .

PARNAS: At our meeting, I was very, very stern. It was a heated conversation from our part to him, basically telling him what needs to be done. I mean, basically me. And at the – at – in the conversation, I told him that if he doesn’t – the announcement was the key at that time because of the inauguration, that Pence would not show up. Nobody would show up to his inauguration.

. . .

PARNAS: Particularly Vice President Mike Pence.

MADDOW: So, the day after that meeting that you had with Mr. Shaffer –

PARNAS: This was Sunday, Sunday the 12th.

MADDOW: I believe it was the following day that, in fact, Vice President Pence’s visit to the inauguration was canceled.

PARNAS: It was after my phone call. The conversation I laid out to Mr. Shaffer was basically what I was told to do by Giuliani and the president.

In addition to his interview on The Rachel Maddow Show, Parnas also gave a second, shorter, interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, in which Parnas described the May 12 meeting in similar terms:

COOPER: And what’s the message you deliver [at the May 12 meeting]?

PARNAS: I basically told them very strict, and very stern, several things. A, that he needed to make an announcement, to immediately make an announcement literally that night or tomorrow, that within the next 24 hours, that they were opening up an investigation on Biden.

COOPER: At that point, was there any mention of withholding of aid?

PARNAS: Yes. Well, if they didn’t make the announcement, basically, there would be no relationship. Not just to – it was no specific military, there was no way they were going to be assisted. There was going to be no inauguration. Pence wouldn’t be at the inauguration. And there would be no visit to the White House. There would be basically – they would have no communications.

COOPER: So how, you told the top official in the Zelensky inner circle if they did not announce an investigation of the Bidens immediately and get rid of some folks around Zelensky who they believed were opposed to President Trump, that there wouldn’t be any aid and Vice President Pence would not even come to the inauguration?

PARNAS: Correct.

COOPER: And what happened? What did they say?

PARNAS: I called Rudy, told them that I don’t think it’s going to – there is going to be an announcement. And he said, OK, they’ll see.

Parnas’s claims, if corroborated, would show President Trump’s direct involvement in a scheme to use the powers of his office to coerce Ukraine into providing assistance to his 2020 campaign. The key phrase there being, of course, “if corroborated.”

Summary of Events Surrounding the May 12 Meeting

Below is summary of relevant events leading up to, and following, Parnas’s May 12 meeting in Kyiv. Events that have been established either by the existing documentary record or by undisputed witness testimony are below in regular font, while events based on Parnas’s account of events – and in need of corroboration – are in bold.

May 10:

• Sometime around midday, Kyiv time, Parnas meets with Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs. Parnas gives Avakov Giuliani’s letter, with instructions to pass the letter on to Present-Elect Zelensky. In the letter, Giuliani requests a meeting with President-Elect Zelensky on either May 13 or May 14. According to Giuliani’s contemporaneous statements to reporters, his purpose in seeking a meeting with Zelensky is to ask the President-Elect to open an investigation into Joe Biden.
• Giuliani’s efforts to arrange a meeting with Zelensky fail.
• Giuliani goes on Fox News and announces that he is calling off his trip to Ukraine, and claims that he decided against meeting with Zelensky because he is surrounded by enemies of President Trump.

May 11:

• Shortly after noon, Kyiv time, Parnas and Prosecutor General Lutsenko meet up, apparently at Parnas’s hotel.
• Lutsenko then attends a meeting with President-Elect Zelensky, during which Lutsenko asks Zelensky to let him keep his job as Prosecutor General.
• At 3:24pm, Kyiv time, Parnas sends a message to Lutsenko, copying Giuliani’s press release stating that he had canceled his trip to Kyiv after “conclud[ing] that the President elect is being advised by people who were very vocal opponents of President Trump and peculiarly vocal supports of Hillary Clinton.” Parnas instructs Lutsenko to read the message out to Zelensky.
• Following his meeting with Zelensky, Lutsenko meets with Parnas for a second time.
• That evening, Parnas sends a WhatsApp message to Sergey Shefir, a senior advisor to Zelensky, and introduces himself. From their communications with one another, it appears that an agreement had already been reached for Parnas and Shefir to meet at some point the following day. Via WhatsApp, Shefir and Parnas make plans to meet the following morning at 10:00am.
• According to Parnas, Giuliani has a “meeting with the president at the White House,” during which Giuliani and Trump discuss what should be done at Parnas’s meeting with Shefir. (Maddow at 7)
• Following Giuliani’s meeting at the White House, Giuliani calls Parnas and tells him that, in his meeting the following day, Parnas should deliver a “a very harsh message.” (Maddow at 7) Parnas is to tell Shefir that Zelensky “need[s] to make an announcement, to immediately make an announcement literally that night or tomorrow, that within the next 24 hours, that they were opening up an investigation on Biden.” (Cooper at 3) Parnas says he communicated to Shefir that, should Zelensky fail to meet these demands, the entire U.S.-Ukraine relationship would be in jeopardy; not only would the U.S. would cut off assistance to Ukraine, but “Pence wouldn’t be at the inauguration. And there would be no visit to the White House. There would be basically – they would have no communications.” (Cooper at 3)

May 12:

• At approximately 10:00am, Kyiv time, Parnas, Shefir, and Fruman meet at Restaurant Prague.
• During the meeting, following Giuliani’s instructions, Parnas delivers the message to Shefir: “The conversation I laid out to [Shefir] was basically what I was told to do by Giuliani and the president.” (Maddow at 9)
• Shefir and Parnas conclude their meeting by agreeing that Shefir would report back to Zelensky, and Shefir and Giuliani would meet up again at the end of the day in order for Shefir to give Parnas Zelensky’s answer. According to Parnas, after the meeting he updated Giuliani on what had happened: “And then, afterwards, I relayed back to them saying that he’s going to get back to me later that tonight and we’re supposed to meet.” (Maddow at 9)
• For the rest of the day on May 12, Parnas waits to hear back from the Ukrainian officials, but by that evening, he has not received word from anyone. Finally, Parnas reaches out to Shefir again: “around 8:00, or 9:00 at night, I texted them back again saying, any word? What’s the situation? And at that point, because on WhatsApp when a person like disconnects you” (Maddow at 9)
• Parnas contacts Giuliani and tells him that he does not think Zelensky has agreed to their demands: “I understood that [Shefir’s lack of response] was a no. So, I called [Giuliani] back and said no-go, and he – I remember Rudy going, OK, they’ll see” (Maddow at 9); “I called Rudy, told them that I don’t think it’s going to – there is going to be an announcement. And he said, OK, they’ll see.” (Cooper at 3)

May 13:

• Parnas tells Toensing, via WhatsApp messages sent just after 4:00am, Eastern time, that he was “waiting to hear from president elect today” and that he was “on standby waiting to hear [for the] next couple of hours.”
• Shortly after 11:00am, Eastern time, Vice President Pence’s office receives instructions that President Trump has decided to cancel Pence’s trip to the Zelensky inauguration.
• Parnas learns that Pence will not be attending Zelensky’s inauguration: “I got called and said that they got a call from them, some – basically some – they found out that Pence is not going to be there, they got – he got cancelled. They said that there was a scheduling problem or something.” (Cooper at 3)

May 15-16

• A few days after Parnas’s meeting with Shefir, Zelensky’s team learns that Vice President Pence’s trip to Ukraine has been canceled.
• According to Parnas, “And then after that, like I think on the 16th or the 15th, I don’t remember the exact dates, [Zelensky’s team] had – because they were flipping out what to do. They didn’t want to be embarrassed. They didn’t know if anybody at all was going to show up, you know, but they knew Pence wasn’t coming, Trump wasn’t coming.” (Cooper at 4); “[W]ithin the next couple of days, all of a sudden, [the Ukrainian officials] realize that now they get word, because obviously, when Pence cancels, they get word that Pence is not coming. So, now, they realize that what I – what I was telling them is true.” (Maddow at 9)

Corroborating Parnas’s Claims About the May 12 Meeting

Parnas’s story about the May 12 meeting is specific, detailed, and based on his first-hand experiences – and contains numerous details that, if true, should be relatively easy to confirm. At the moment, the public record available about the May 12 meeting comes from (1) statements to the media from other witnesses; and (2) documentary records that have been made available to the House in the course of the impeachment inquiry. Thus far, Parnas’s account is consistent with the existing record of evidence. Additional corroboration for Parnas’s claims is also likely to be found in additional materials that have previously been produced to the House, but have not been publicly released.

Statements from Other Witnesses

The existence of the May 12 meeting is not in dispute.[3] It took place at the Restaurant Prague at approximately 10:00am on May 12, and three people were there: Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, and Sergey Shefir. Per the New York Times, the three men sipped coffee and spoke in Russian.

In the November 10, 2019 article that first reported on the existence of the May 12 meeting, the New York Times describes Parnas’s account of the meeting as “potentially significant,” but cautions that it has been “contradicted on several fronts,” suggesting that other witnesses have disputed Parnas’s assertions about what happened.

Although skepticism of Parnas’s account is very much warranted, in describing Parnas’s account as “contradicted,” the New York Times appears to have been overstating the case. All three meeting participants (or their attorneys) are quoted in the article, along with Giuliani, but none of the quoted statements in the Times article actually contradict anything that Parnas has said.

For instance, Igor Fruman’s attorney, John Dowd, gave the following statement about the May 12 meeting:

A lawyer for Mr. Fruman, John M. Dowd, said his client told him the men were seeking only a meeting with Mr. Zelensky, the new president. “There was no mention of any terms, military aid or whatever they are talking about it — it’s false,” said Mr. Dowd, who represents Mr. Fruman along with the lawyer Todd Blanche.

Fruman, through Dowd, denies that a specific term – “military aid” – ever came up during the May 12 meeting. But that isn’t actually a contradiction of anything Parnas has said; nowhere in the Times article is Parnas quoted as having used the term “military aid,” either. And, in his interview with Maddow, when Maddow used the term “military aid” in questioning Parnas about the meeting, Parnas corrects her:

It has been reported as far as we understand, from public reporting, that you conveyed to Mr. Shaffer the exact quid pro quo, that you wanted Zelensky to announce investigations into Joe Biden or military aid would not be released to Ukraine. Is that accurate?

. . .

PARNAS:  … The message was, it wasn’t just military aid, it was all aid. Basically their relationships would be sour.

Parnas made a similar point in his interview with Cooper:

COOPER: At that point, was there any mention of withholding of aid?

PARNAS: Yes. Well, if they didn’t make the announcement, basically, there would be no relationship. Not just to – it was no specific military, there was no way they were going to be assisted.

Based on Parnas’s descriptions of the meeting, the threat Parnas had conveyed to Shefir was not in regards to any particular category of foreign assistance to Ukraine. Rather, Parnas says he was conveying a more generalized threat: that Zelensky must announce the Biden investigations immediately, or else the entire relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine would be at risk, along with all U.S. monetary assistance to Ukraine, military or otherwise. The only specific threat that Parnas says he conveyed to Shefir was not about any monetary aid, but about Vice President Pence’s attendance at Zelensky’s upcoming inauguration.

Giuliani is also quoted in the New York Times article, but does not deny Parnas’s account of the message he conveyed to Shefir. Instead, Giuliani only denies that he instructed Parnas to deliver that message:

Mr. Giuliani denied Mr. Parnas’s contention that he had delivered the warning at the direction of Mr. Giuliani. “Categorically, I did not tell him to say that,” Mr. Giuliani said.

In his statement, Sergey Shefir, like Fruman, denies that the term “military aid” ever came up during the May 12 meeting. But Shefir does not otherwise contradict Parnas’s account of what transpired at the meeting:

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Shefir acknowledged meeting with Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. But he said they had not raised the issue of military aid. Mr. Shefir said he briefed the incoming president on the meeting. … “We did not treat Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman as official representatives, and therefore we did not consider that they could speak on behalf of the U.S. government,” Mr. Shefir said. He added Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman had requested that Mr. Zelensky meet with Mr. Giuliani.

Mr. Shefir said in his statement that he had told Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman “that we could consider meeting with Mr. Giuliani, but only publicly and officially and only after the inauguration of the newly elected president.”

In fact, Shefir’s statement is consistent with Parnas’s own account of the meeting dynamics.[4] In Parnas’s interview with Maddow, Parnas described how Shefir (and, through him, Zelensky) had not seemed to take Parnas’s demands seriously; Parnas implies that the Ukrainian officials may have harbored doubts as to whether Parnas truly spoke on behalf of Giuliani and President Trump, like he claims. According to Parnas, it was only after Vice President canceled his attendance to Zelensky’s inauguration that the Ukrainian officials realized Parnas had been telling them the truth:

Next, within the next couple of days, all of a sudden, they realize that now they get word, because obviously, when Pence cancels, they get word that Pence is not coming. So, now, they realize that what I – what I was telling them is true. (Maddow at 9)

Documentary Records Already in the Possession of HPSCI

If Parnas’s account of May 12 is true, the HPSCI should already be in possession of records that could provide significant corroboration for many of his claims.

• Records corroborating Parnas’s claim that, prior to the May 12 meeting, Giuliani instructed Parnas to deliver the “very harsh message” to Shefir

In his interview with Maddow, Parnas stated that he received instructions to deliver “a very harsh message” to Shefir pursuant to a phone call from Giuliani, and that Giuliani had made this call “after … meeting with the president at the White House.” (Maddow at 7)

If Parnas’s account is true, then there are likely phone records that confirm the existence of phone calls between Parnas and Giuliani on the afternoon or evening of May 11 – that is, sometime after Parnas and Shefir had made plans to meet, but before their meeting actually took place. Moreover, these communications between Parnas and Giuliani would have occurred shortly after Giuliani had an opportunity to meet with President Trump.

It turns out that there is a fairly limited window during which these communications could have taken place. On May 11, a Saturday, Trump spent the day at his Virginia golf club, and left the White House at 9:16am, Eastern time, and returned at 3:03pm. If Parnas is correct about Giuliani having met with Trump at the White House that day, then any meeting between Giuliani and President Trump presumably occurred either before 9:16am or after 3:03pm. And, based on Parnas’s account, we would expect to see phone activity between Giuliani and Parnas that follows on the heels of that.

Conveniently, HPSCI should already be in possession of the phone records that could confirm Parnas’s account, including call records for Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman.[5] These records were obtained by the House during the impeachment inquiry, and cited extensively throughout the HPSCI report. Although that report does not mention any phone calls that took place on May 11 or May 12 – and so does not make public the specific portions of the phone records that are relevant to Parnas’s account – the report does include detailed discussion of call records for Parnas and Giuliani from other dates. Such as on May 8:

On the morning of May 8, Mr. Giuliani called the White House Switchboard and connected for six minutes and 26 seconds with someone at the White House. That same day, Mr. Giuliani also connected with Mr. Solomon for almost six minutes, with Mr. Parnas, and with Derek Harvey, a member of Representative Nunes’ staff on the Intelligence Committee. (HPSCI Report at 56)

And on May 9:

On May 9, following public revelation of his trip by the New York Times, Mr. Giuliani connected in quick succession with Mr. Solomon and then Mr. Parnas for several minutes at a time. Mr. Giuliani then made brief connections with the White House Switchboard and Situation Room several times, before connecting at 1:43 p.m. Eastern Time with someone at the White House for over four minutes. He connected, separately, thereafter with Mr. Parnas several times in the afternoon and into the evening. (HPSCI Report at 57)

And on May 10:

[Giuliani] then had another flurry of calls with Mr. Parnas. Shortly after 2:00 p.m., Eastern Time, Mr. Giuliani also spoke with Ambassador Volker on the phone. Ambassador Volker had learned that Mr. Giuliani intended to travel to Ukraine “to pursue these allegations that Lutsenko had made, and he was going to investigate these things”—specifically, the debunked story that Vice President Biden had improperly pressured Ukraine to fire a corrupt prosecutor general, as well as the Russian-backed conspiracy that the Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Ambassador Volker testified that he had a simple warning for Mr. Giuliani: Prosecutor General Lutsenko “is not credible. Don’t listen to what he is saying.” Call records obtained by the Committees reveal that their call lasted more than 30 minutes.

Call records also show that around midday on May 10, Mr. Giuliani began trading aborted calls with Kashyap “Kash” Patel, an official at the National Security Council who previously served on Ranking Member Devin Nunes’ staff on the Intelligence Committee. Mr. Patel successfully connected with Mr. Giuliani less than an hour after Mr. Giuliani’s call with Ambassador Volker. Beginning at 3:23 p.m., Eastern Time, Mr. Patel and Mr. Giuliani spoke for over 25 minutes. Five minutes after Mr. Patel and Mr. Giuliani disconnected, an unidentified “-1” number connected with Mr. Giuliani for over 17 minutes. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Giuliani spoke with Mr. Parnas for approximately 12 minutes. (HPSCI Report at 58)

The call records from May 8-10 also show a recurring pattern: Giuliani would have a “flurry” of calls with Parnas early in the day, which was later followed by call(s) with the White House, which in turn was followed with additional calls to Parnas. Interspersed with Giuliani’s communications with both Parnas and the White House are additional calls between Giuliani and reporter John Solomon, as well as calls between Giuliani and individuals who were or have been members of Rep. Devin Nunes’ staff.

Although phone records for May 11 and May 12 are not referenced in the HPSCI report, the subpoenaed call records would have included call activity for that time period as well. WhatsApp messages exchanged between Parnas and Giuliani confirm that it is likely the two of them were in phone contact when Parnas’s meeting with Shefir was in the planning stages:

Additionally, Parnas’s messages with Victoria Toensing show that he was likely in phone contact with her as well. For instance, shortly after Parnas made contact with Sergey Shefir, Parnas and Toensing had the following exchange:

It should be noted that Giuliani’s phone records alone will not be sufficient to corroborate one aspect of Parnas’s story: that before Parnas received his instructions from Giuliani about what to say at the meeting, Giuliani discussed the matter with Trump. According to Parnas, Giuliani and Trump had this conversation at a face-to-face meeting, which Parnas says happened at the White House. If Parnas is correct about that, then Giuliani’s phone records alone won’t provide corroborating evidence for it. Other records may exist that could confirm this aspect of Parnas’s account, however.[6] And President Trump’s social media activity on May 11 suggests that Biden’s activities in Ukraine were very much on his mind. That morning, before departing for his golf course, he retweeted Mike Huckabee’s tweet accusing former Vice President Biden of misconduct in Ukraine:

• Records of calls made between Parnas and Giuliani during the May 12 meeting.

Parnas told Maddow that when he met with Ukrainian officials, it was common practice for Giuliani to be called and put on speakerphone at some point during the meeting, so that Giuliani could confirm to the Ukrainian officials that Parnas had the authority to speak with them on his behalf.

However, it is unclear if complete phone records for May 12 would show evidence of Parnas and Giuliani communicating during the May 12 meeting. Parnas and Fruman met with Shefir at 10:00am Kyiv time, or 3:00am Eastern time, and given the late hour it is possible Giuliani would not have been available to call in to the meeting. However, if the House does in fact have Parnas’s and Giuliani’s phone records for May 12, it would be interesting to see if any calls between Giuliani and Parnas (or Giuliani and Fruman) appear between 3:00am and 4:00am Eastern time. Such a call would provide strong proof of Giuliani’s knowledge of the meeting.

• Records of Parnas’s communications with Giuliani immediately following the May 12 meeting, in which Parnas “relayed back” to Giuliani “that [Shefir is] going to get back to me later that night and we’re supposed to meet.” (Maddow at 9)

According to Parnas, after the May 12 meeting, Parnas updated Giuliani on events, and informed him that Shefir was to get back to him later that evening with Zelensky’s answer. Whether this communication happened via a phone call, text message, or some other form was not specified in Parnas’s interview with Maddow. Unfortunately, the WhatsApp communications that have been made publicly available so far are incomplete, and no communications between Parnas and Giuliani that occurred between May 12 and May 15 were included. Pagination on the produced WhatsApp records show that there were frequent WhatsApp exchanges between them at this time, however, as the last available message from May 11 appears on page 230, and the next record, from May 16, jumps ahead to page 246.

While the nature of any WhatsApp communications between Giuliani and Parnas is thus unknown to the public at this time (and perhaps unknown to the House, as well – it is unclear how complete the record handed over by Parnas was), reporting from the Wall Street Journal has already indicated that there were in fact phone calls between Parnas and Giuliani on the relevant days:

Messrs. Giuliani and Parnas were in close contact in the days surrounding both meetings: The two men called or tried to call each other nearly 40 times the week of the February meeting, a person familiar with the matter said. On the day of the May meeting, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Parnas twice, and Mr. Parnas called him three times the next day, the person said, and they exchanged hundreds of calls over the course of that week.

The Wall Street Journal does not provide any further details about these calls, such as what time they were made or how long the calls lasted, but its report does appear to confirm that call records for the dates in question do exist, and do show contact between Parnas and Giuliani in the approximate time period that would be expected, based on Parnas’s account. Additionally, if Parnas is called to testify before the Senate, he would be able to provide further details about how he and Giuliani communicated that day, and might be able to identify other forms of records that could corroborate his account.

• Records of Parnas’s communication with Shefir following the May 12 meeting.

According to Parnas, the May 12 meeting ended with Shefir and Parnas agreeing to connect again later that day, once Shefir had a chance to brief Zelensky on what Parnas and Fruman had told him. Parnas did not hear back from the Ukrainian officials, however, so that evening he reached out again to Shefir: “Then around 8:00, or 9:00 at night, I texted them back again saying, any word? What’s the situation? And at that point, because on WhatsApp when a person like disconnects you, and he disconnected me, our conversation.” (Maddow at 9)

The available record supports Parnas’s description of events. In the WhatsApp messages between Parnas and Shefir show that, after their meeting at 10:00am that morning, the next and final communication between them that day occurred at 9:41pm, Kyiv time, when Parnas messaged Shefir: “Serhiy[,] good evening[,] is there any news!”

Shefir did not respond to Parnas’s message. In fact, although in the following months Parnas would try twice more to message Shefir, Shefir never responded to Parnas again.

Other WhatsApp messages sent and received by Parnas on May 12 provide additional context for Parnas’s account of events – though due to the cryptic wording used in many of the WhatsApp exchanges, the exact meaning of these messages is often ambiguous at best. For instance, half an hour after Parnas’s message to Shefir, Parnas sent a message to Lutsenko: “Yuriy dial me I have something important to tell you.” It is unclear if the two connected by phone, but at 10:51pm, Kyiv time, Parnas sent a second message, telling Lutsenko that if he can’t reach Parnas tonight, to call him tomorrow at 1pm. At nearly 1am, Lutsenko finally responded, stating “Let’s call. Better after 4. I have a lot of work to do.”

It is unclear what the “something important” was that Parnas needed to communicate to Lutsenko, but Lutsenko’s next response to Parnas, sent the following day, may provide a clue:

“So is he against the investigation?”, Lutsenko asks. Unfortunately, this exchange between Lutsenko and Parnas is maddeningly devoid of context. Who is the “he” in Lutsenko’s message? Is it Shefir? Zelensky himself? If so, this message would seem to be corroboration of Parnas’s claim about what was discussed at the May 12th meeting: the announcement of a Biden investigation.

• Records of Parnas’s call to Giuliani on May 12, in which Parnas told Giuliani, “I don’t think [ ] there is going to be an announcement [of a Biden investigation],” to which Giuliani responds, “OK, they’ll see” (Cooper at 3)

In his interviews with both Maddow and Cooper, Parnas stated that, after he did not hear back from the Zelensky administration on the evening of May 12, he “called Rudy, told them that I don’t think it’s going to – there is going to be an announcement. And he said, OK, they’ll see.” (Cooper at 3) If Parnas’s account is true, there should be phone records reflecting the call he described. Moreover, based on Parnas’s version of events, Giuliani must have passed the word on to the White House in a very short amount of time, because less than 24 hours later – by approximately 11:00am, Eastern time, on May 13 – President Trump had already issued instructions to the Vice President’s office, informing him that he would no longer be attending Zelensky’s inauguration. This means that, under Parnas’s story, communications between Parnas and Giuliani would have fallen within a narrow window of time.

Based on the reporting from the Wall Street Journal, Giuliani and Parnas exchanged phone calls on both May 12 and May 13. Further details from the call records may help corroborate Parnas’s account by showing that the timing of his communications with Giuliani corresponds with the known timeline of when it was decided that Vice President Pence would not attend the inauguration.

• Records that could explain when and why President Trump made the decision to  cancel Vice President Pence’s trip to attend the Zelensky inauguration

In his interviews with Maddow and Cooper, Parnas stated that, the day following his meeting with Shefir, President Trump ordered Vice President Pence to cancel his plans to attend Zelensky’s inauguration. On this point, Parnas’s account is factually correct; the known sequence of events surrounding the cancelation of Vice President Pence’s trip to Ukraine matches his description. But the explosive part of Parnas’s account – and the part that remains to be corroborated – is his claim that Trump’s decision to cancel Pence’s trip to Ukraine had been made in  response to the Zelensky administration’s failure to comply with the demands conveyed by Parnas in the May 12 meeting.

In his interview with Cooper, Parnas said that he told Shefir “that [Zelensky] needed to make an announcement, to immediately make an announcement literally that night or tomorrow, that within the next 24 hours, that they were opening up an investigation on Biden,” and that Shefir was warned that, should Zelensky fail to comply with the demands, Pence would not be at the inauguration. (Cooper at 3) The following day, when no announcement had been made, President Trump made good on his threat and pulled Pence from the inauguration.

Prior to the May 12 meeting, Pence’s attendance at Zelensky’s inauguration had already been agreed upon, and the Ukrainian officials would have been expecting him to be there. President Trump had made the decision for Pence to attend the inauguration on April 21, the day Zelensky won the election. (Williams at 37-38, 41) However, at that point, the exact date of the inauguration was unknown, as under Ukrainian law the parliament was responsible for scheduling the inauguration, based on the president-elect’s recommendations, but the parliament could not do so until May 13, when they were back in session. (Williams at 57) After Zelensky’s election, the Ukrainians informed their American counterparts that a final decision on the inauguration date would be announced sometime during the week of May 13, but that they were “looking at the end of May window” for the inauguration, or possibly early June. (Id.) The Vice President’s office had begun initial planning for the trip, but shortly after 11:00am on May 13 (the day after Parnas’s meeting with Shefir) Vice President Pence’s staff received a phone call informing them that Pence would not be attending the inauguration. (Williams at 38) There was no explanation given for why the trip was canceled, and at that point there were no scheduling conflicts or other difficulties that would have prevented Pence from attending; instead, all the Vice President’s office was told was that “the President had determined that the Vice President should not go.” (Williams at 160) Following Pence’s cancelation, the Ukrainian parliament announced, on May 16, that the inauguration would be held much sooner than they had previously anticipated, and would take place just four days later, on May 20. (Williams at 57)

Because President Trump has refused to produce any records before the House’s impeachment inquiry, there is nothing available in the public record that can explain why Pence’s attendance at the inauguration was canceled. But there must be some explanation for this. Immediately following Zelensky’s election, Pence’s attendance at the inauguration had been deemed to be in the U.S.’s best foreign policy interest – so how, and why, did the White House come to suddenly change its mind about this, on the morning of May 13? No reason has ever been offered by President Trump or the White House, and although Republicans in the House have tried to dismiss Pence’s failure to attend as some kind of scheduling mix up or logistical conflict, no evidence has been produced that supports this explanation.

In contrast, Parnas’s claims about why Pence was withdrawn from the inauguration do provide a plausible and coherent explanation for the known sequence of events. That, by itself, cannot confirm the truth of Parnas’s account. But the available evidence lends far more support to Parnas’s account than it does to any of the explanations that have been proffered by House Republicans.

Parnas’s WhatsApp messages are also consistent with Parnas’s statements to Anderson Cooper about the specific demands that Parnas conveyed to Shefir. According to Parnas, Shefir was told that Zelensky needed to make the Biden announcement right away, as in “literally that night or tomorrow, [ ] within the next 24 hours.” (Cooper at 3) Parnas says that when Shefir failed to respond to him on the evening of May 12 as had been planned, Parnas interpreted this as a no, and contacted Giuliani to tell him, “I don’t think it’s going to – there is going to be an announcement.” (Id.)

But Parnas says that the message he gave to Shefir was that Zelensky had “the next 24 hours” to make a decision. That would mean that, by the evening of May 12, Zelensky technically had not failed to comply with the demands – it would not be until May 13 that Giuliani and Parnas could have known for sure that Zelensky was not going to comply.

And in fact, Parnas’s WhatsApp messages to Toensing provide strong supporting evidence that  the following morning, on May 13, Parnas was still waiting for word from President-Elect Zelensky:

Just after 4:00am, Eastern time, Parnas told Toensing that he was “waiting to hear from president elect today,” and that plans were “on standby waiting to hear [in the] next couple hours.” These messages are fully consistent with Parnas’ account about what happened at the May 12 meeting, as well as with the known timeline of events with regards to the cancelation of Pence’s trip.

If Parnas’s account is true, then within a few hours of Parnas’s messages to Toensing, Parnas must have communicate to Giuliani that Zelensky had not agreed to the demands, and, in turn, Giuliani must have quickly communicated this message to the White House – because just a few hours later, the decision was made to cancel Pence’s attendance at the inauguration.

Based on the Wall Street Journal report, the call records between Parnas and Giuliani show at least three calls from Parnas to Giuliani on May 13. A review of the complete call records obtained by HPSCI may provide further corroboration of Parnas’s story, if it is shown that Giuliani communicated with the White House that morning, after he had spoken to Parnas but before Pence’s trip was canceled at 11:00am.

A Note of Caution: Parnas Has His Own Reasons for Talking

The record made available so far has, in fact, been largely consistent with Parnas’s account of the May 12 meeting, and provides corroboration for many key details in his claims. However, while this evidence supports Parnas’s account to a degree, or at least doesn’t contradict it, there are numerous suggestions in the record that Parnas’s account is incomplete. In particular, Parnas’s claims appear to be selectively omitting events that could suggest his culpability in as-of-yet uncharged crimes under the Foreign Agent Registration Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

For instance, in his interviews with both Cooper and Maddow, Parnas acknowledged that the demand for the Biden investigation was not the only demand conveyed in the May 12 meeting:

“I basically told them very strict, and very stem, several things. A, that he needed to make an announcement, to immediately make an announcement literally that night or tomorrow, that within the next 24 hours, that they were opening up an investigation on Biden.” (Cooper at 3)

“It was several things. There were several demands at that point. A, the most important was the announcement of the Biden investigation.” (Maddow at 8)

There were “several demands” that Parnas made of Shefir, Parnas acknowledges, but Parnas only identifies one. What were these other demands made of Shefir? Were those demands also requested by Giuliani, or by Trump, or were they independently made by Parnas?

Should Parnas testify before the Senate, it is possible that he would be able to provide a fuller account of these activities.[7]

The TL;DR

Lev Parnas’s account of the May 12 meeting, if proven, would demonstrate President Trump’s direct involvement in the Ukraine Scheme’s efforts to coerce the Ukrainian government into providing his campaign with assistance in the 2020 election. Parnas’s testimony is critical evidence that should be heard at the Senate’s impeachment trial, and his answers under oath would provide clarification for many of the details that Parnas did not address in the course of two brief cable news interviews.

But already there is already strong evidence to suggest that the central planks of Parnas’s claims are true, at least in regards to the portion of the Ukraine Scheme’s efforts that were focused on the Biden investigation. Based on the existing public record, Parnas’s account of the May 12 meeting, as described in his interviews with Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper, can be shown to be consistent with all available witness statements and documents, and many of the key details of his claims can be corroborated by documents already produced by the House in the course of the impeachment inquiry. Finally, in addition to the public records cited in this article, other records that are already in HPSCI’s possession, as well as additional discovery materials produced in the criminal proceeding against Parnas that may later be transmitted to HPSCI, are likely to provide additional corroboration for Parnas’s account.

-Susan

[1] Parnas’s WhatsApp messages suggest that Yuriy Lutsenko may have also been aware of the purpose of the pair’s early April trip to Israel. On April 2, Parnas messaged Lutsenko, “This is going to be a big week.” In response, Lutsenko sent Parnas an image of David fighting Goliath – a possible reference to Parnas’s upcoming plans to meet with the billionaire Kolomoisky.

[2] On April 7, at the conclusion of Parnas’s and Fruman’s first trip to Israel, the Department of Justice leaked a story to the Daily Beast that described how Kolomoisky was under FBI investigation for financial crimes. That the DOJ would choose to leak this news at all is questionable – there is no apparent legitimate basis for why the FBI would have wanted to make its ongoing investigation public at that time, particularly given the timing of the release, just weeks before the Ukrainian election – and raises question about whether this leak was ordered by the White House in order to increase pressure on Kolomoisky, with the aim of inducing his cooperation with Giuliani’s and Parnas’s efforts to open an investigation into Biden in Ukraine. Should either Parnas or Giuliani testify before the Senate, they should be questioned as to whether they have knowledge about the timing of the Daily Beast’s story.

[3] That the meeting with Shefir did in fact take place is further confirmed by Parnas’s messages to Shefir on the morning of May 12 on his way to the Restaurant Prague:

Parnas: Good morning Sergei I am already on the road but I was delayed for 15 minutes, so I will be there somewhere around 10:15 to 10:20 thank you.

Shefir: Ok

[4] Additionally, Shefir’s statement that they “did not consider that [Parnas and Fruman] could speak on behalf of the U.S. government” is in no way a contradiction of Parnas’s version of events. Parnas used Giuliani’s letter to introduce himself to Shefir, and that letter makes clear that Giuliani – and through him Parnas – are not representatives of the U.S. government, but instead represent Donald Trump in his personal capacity.

[5] As part of its investigation, HPSCI issued at least six subpoenas for cellphone records, including subpoenas for call records for both Giuliani and Fruman. Although Parnas’s phone records were not specifically identified as among those obtained by subpoena, the HPSCI’s report on the impeachment inquiry indicates that the HPSCI was in fact of possession of call records for Parnas.

[6] Although no public records are currently available to confirm that Trump and Giuliani met on May 11, there is evidence to suggest such a meeting was in fact planned. On the afternoon of May 10, Trump gave an interview to Politico in which, after being asked about Giuliani’s plans to travel to Kyiv on May 12, Trump stated, “I have not spoken to him at any great length, but I will … I will speak to him about it before he leaves.”

[7] In fact, it is possible that is exactly what Parnas is hoping for. Parnas’s testimony, given under subpoena, will have use immunity, and cannot be used by the government to charge him with additional criminal offenses. Although the government would not be barred from charging Parnas for that conduct based on evidence derived from other sources, as shown by the example of Oliver North’s testimony before Congress in the Iran-Contra affair, the act of testifying before Congress about your own criminal activities can, in the right circumstances, successfully prevent your prosecution for those acts.