Lev Parnas, an associate of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, claimed the president “knew exactly what was going on” as the former New York mayor sought to get the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden.

“President Trump knew exactly what was going on. He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani, or the president. I have no intent, I have no reason to speak to any of these officials,” Parnas said in an interview Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

The Soviet-born Parnas, who has been indicted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan on charges of violating campaign finance laws, said the president and Giuliani ensured that he would have access to top Ukrainian officials.

“I mean, they have no reason to speak to me. Why would President Zelensky’s inner circle, or Minister Avakov, or all these people, or President Poroshenko meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me,” Parnas said. “And that’s the secret that they’re trying to keep. I was on the ground doing their work.”

Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in April, defeating the incumbent president Petro Poroshenko. Arsen Borysovych is Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs.

The House voted Dec. 18 to impeach Trump over his dealings in Ukraine.

The White House in a statement to NBC News on Thursday dismissed Parnas’ claims.

“These allegations are being made by a man who is currently out on bail for federal crimes and is desperate to reduce his exposure to prison,” Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said.

“The facts haven’t changed — the president did nothing wrong and this impeachment, which was manufactured and carried out by the Democrats has been a sham from the start,” she added.

Giuliani, in a statement to MSNBC, denied telling Ukrainian officials that Parnas was acting on behalf of the president.

“All I can say is the truth. He’s a very sad situation,” the former mayor said of Parnas.

The impeachment stems from a July phone call in which Trump called on Zelensky to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, a 2020 political rival, and his son, Hunter, who had been on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.

The president has described his call with Zelensky as “perfect” and said he was just trying to root out corruption in the country before releasing millions in US military aid to Ukraine.

But Parnas, in the interview, said Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine had nothing to do with corruption.

“It was all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Rudy had a personal thing with the Manafort stuff, the Black Ledger. That was another thing they were looking into, but it was never about corruption. It was it strictly about Burisma, which included Hunter Biden and Joe Biden,” Parnas said.

Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, is serving a seven-year prison sentence after being found guilty of tax fraud and conspiracy in August 2018 for his work as a lobbyist in Ukraine.

Parnas, who said he is willing to cooperate with federal prosecutors and testify in Trump’s impeachment trial, said the pressure on Zelensky to announce an investigation into the Bidens went beyond military aid.

“Mayor Rudy Giuliani told me after, you know meeting with the president at the White House, the message was it wasn’t just military aid, it was all aid,” he said. “Basically their relationships would be sour, that we would stop giving them any kind of aid. Unless there were several demands at that point. The most important was the announcement of the Biden investigation.”

Parnas also said Vice President Mike Pence was aware of Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine and was supposed to deliver a stern message to Zelensky at his inauguration in May about announcing the investigation.

But he said Pence’s scheduled meeting with Zelensky was called off at the last moment when Parnas told Giuliani that the Ukrainians were balking on making the announcement.

“So, I called back and said no-go, and he – I remember Rudy going, OK, they’ll see,” Parnas said. “Basically, the next day, Pence, to my awareness, Trump called up and said, to make sure Pence doesn’t go there.”

Maddow asked if Parnas believed Pence was aware why his trip was canceled.

“He couldn’t have not known, absolutely,” he said.

Quoting the House testimony of Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, Parnas said, “everybody was in the loop.”

Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, questioned Parnas’ motivation.

“This is very simple: Lev Parnas is under a multi-count indictment and will say anything to anybody who will listen in hopes of staying out of prison. It’s no surprise that only the liberal media is listening to him,” Short said.