Everything is connected: Nunes in the web

Well, well, well. Look where we find Devin Nunes.

Joseph A. Bondy, the attorney for Lev Parnas [an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani], told CNN that [a] Ukrainian official told his client about [a] meeting with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, in which the GOP lawmaker sought to find dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

"Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December," Bondy said.

  The Hill

Hearsay! will shout Nunes and Company. And Nunes immediately filed another one of his sure-to-lose lawsuits against CNN for printing the story! (AND one against The Daily Beast for a story it published on the same thing.) He's also suing two parody twitter accounts for making fun of him.

Dein Nunes' cow...

And Devin Nunes' Mom...

He'll have even less of a chance to win against major news organizations than parody Twitter accounts. He must have deep pockets.

Bondy told CNN that Parnas put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians to help Nunes get damaging information on Biden, one of the president’s chief political rivals.

Giuliani has previously discussed his conversations with Shokin and Parnas as part of his work on behalf of the president. However, Bondy’s discussions with CNN mark the first time Nunes has been implicated in the effort to dig up dirt on Biden.

We know Nunes was in Vienna last December.

CNN claims that they began to ask Nunes questions about his Vienna trip on November 14, to which Nunes responded to CNN: “I don’t talk to you in this lifetime or the next lifetime. At any time. On any question.”

CNN asked Nunes about the trip again on Thursday, to which Nunes responded: “To be perfectly clear, I don’t acknowledge any questions from you in this lifetime or the next lifetime. I don’t acknowledge any question from you ever.”

  Daily Wire

You may remember that Vienna is where Dmytro Firtash is hiding out avoiding extradition to the US.

Imagine that. Kind of gives more clarity to why Nunes' performance in the impeachment hearings has been so over-the-top disgusting and ridiculous.

And, by the way, regarding Firtash, even Republicans are wondering WTF? This SHOULD be where Republicans grow some balls and accept the reality.

Firtash was indicted in 2014 for what federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois allege was his role in bribing Indian officials in order to get a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing. He was arrested in Vienna in March 2014, released on $174 million bail, and has been contesting his extradition to the U.S. ever since.

[...]

A U.S. senator's office says that after 18 months it has still received no answer from the Justice Department about why a Ukrainian oligarch linked to Paul Manafort and two men who work with Rudolph Giuliani has not been extradited to the U.S. to face federal bribery charges.

A spokesperson for Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said, "We have not received a response" to a 2018 letter about Dmytro Firtash.

  NBC

You're mighty patient, sir.

On June 25, Austria approved the extradition of Firtash, who has been living in Vienna since his 2014 arrest, but Firtash has asked that the case be reopened.

Sen. Wicker sent a letter to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April 2018 asking about the status of Firtash's extradition. NBC News exclusively obtained that letter through Freedom of Information Act litigation with the Justice Department.

This administration is pure rot through and through.

Wicker alleged in the letter that Firtash, who has also been linked to Russian organized crime, had made "hundreds of millions" in "illicit profits" while fighting extradition to the U.S.

How much of that went into Nunes' pockets?

"This corruption undermines Ukrainian reform efforts that the United States strongly supports," Wicker wrote to Sessions. He asked Sessions about the status of Firtash's extradition case.

[...]

Rudolph Giuliani has denied any involvement with Firtash and says he has never met him. One of the two Ukrainian-American Giuliani associates who was arrested at Dulles airport before boarding a flight to Vienna last week worked for the Firtash legal team as a translator. Giuliani had planned a trip to Vienna at the same time but said he was not planning to meet with Firtash.

Whatever, Rudy.

The Firtash legal team includes Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, the pro-Trump husband and wife attorneys who Fox News reported were "working off the books" with Giuliani as part of his Ukrainian venture, in which he was seeking information about Joe and Hunter Biden and about the Ukrainian gas industry.

"So, Firtash, I know nothing about," Giuliani told NBC News. "I'm not going to answer any questions about because I'm probably going to get it wrong, and you can ask them."

Whatever, Rudy.

Giuliani said the two men arrested at Dulles on Oct. 9 for campaign finance violations, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, "help me find people," and that he also represents their company as a lawyer.

"Help me find people." That doesn't sound very mobbish, does it? I would think the normal phrase would be "work as private investigators."

Parnas is employed by Firtash's legal team, according to Mark Corallo, spokesperson for diGenova and Toensing.

Sen. Wicker's 2018 letter alleges that prior to 2014, Firtash acted as a "direct agent of the Kremlin" during a separate scheme to skim money from natural gas transfers between Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine.

I don't know how separate that is, because Rudy has been connected to dealings with Ukraine's national gas company Naftogaz.*

"By manipulating natural gas prices," the Wicker letter says, "the Kremlin used RosUkrEnergo as a tool to keep [Kiev] dependent on Moscow." According to the court documents, RosUkrEnergo was a firm created by Firtash and Gazprom, which is majority owned by the Russian government, to skim money.

"Despite his arrest" in 2014, Wicker wrote, "Firtash continues to engage in corruption in Ukraine, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits." His letter estimated the gross amount earned since Firtash's arrest at $1.5 billion.

[...]

In a statement, Rick VanMeter, a spokesperson for Wicker, said, "As the co-chair of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Senator Wicker regularly meets with foreign delegations. He has a deep interest in Ukraine and a strong record of opposing Vladimir Putin's aggression in the region. He stands firmly with the people of Ukraine fighting for freedom and reform. The letter was an inquiry from Senator Wicker to the U.S. administration seeking updates on efforts to extradite Mr. Firtash — widely known for his corruption and connection with the Kremlin and organized crime. The letter was written after considering a range of credible sources, including meetings with foreign delegations, publicly available data, and non-public information."

So Roger Wicker should be seriuosly considering his vote in the Trump impeachment Senate trial. I bet he's being watched very, very closely.

Firtash, 54, owns a valuable portfolio of chemical, real estate and energy businesses. He is perhaps best known in the U.S. as a one-time associate of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, who is now in federal prison.

And I have no doubt soon-to-be-ex-Energy Secretary Rick Perry has fingerprints all over this business.

One of the other partners working with Manafort on the deal was Brad Zackson, the former exclusive broker for the properties of President Donald Trump's late father, Fred Trump.

[...]

According to a December 2008 State Department cable posted by WikiLeaks, Firtash told U.S. Ambassador William Taylor during a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev that he got his start in business with the permission of one of Russia's most well-known organized crime bosses, Semion Mogilevich.

Mogilevich was once on the FBI's top 10 most wanted list and has an Interpol Red Notice out for his arrest. The FBI alleges that he is "involved in weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale."

[...]

"[Firtash] was adamant that he had not committed a single crime when building his business empire," the cable says, and "argued that outsiders still failed to understand the period of lawlessness that reigned in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union."

*Regarding Rudy and Ukrainian gas...this is out today:

The CEO of Ukrainian state gas company Naftogaz told Time he is ready to give evidence to U.S. federal prosecutors probing the business dealings of President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. “I will with a high likelihood be invited to testify in this case,” Andriy Kobolyev said, adding that he “would be willing to come and testify” if he were summoned. Naftogaz is reportedly connected to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two men who allegedly worked with Giuliani to pressure Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Parnas and Fruman allegedly tried to use their political connections to replace the leadership at Naftogaz, which resisted the two men's efforts for a gas deal.

Kobolyev said he would be willing to give prosecutors information on Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani because, as he said, “everything is connected.”

  Daily Beast

Everything.

And, another Nunes lawsuit:  one against Esquire for a story about the farm he has in Iowa titled “Devin Nunes’s Family Farm Is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret.”  In that article we learn he also has suits against Twitter and McClatchy newspapers.

If you'd like to keep track of Devin Nunes' cow, click this graphic...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

It just got clearer.

UPDATE:

UPDATE: