After the House Intelligence Committee released bombshell new documents from Lev Parnas, the former associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who is now under indictment for campaign finance violations and foreign influence peddling, Fox News hosts are busy pushing a new talking point suggesting that it’s somehow suspicious or disqualifying that the evidence is being released now, ahead of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

But the reason for this is in fact very simple: When Parnas was arrested while attempting to flee the country, his electronic devices were also seized. Back in early December, Parnas’ lawyer petitioned the court to allow him to release the materials to Congress, a request that was granted earlier this month.

And those documents are a real doozy, showing Parnas and Giuliani, plus another associate, Republican congressional candidate Robert F. Hyde, engaged in such activities as surveilling Marie Yovanovitch, then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and coordinating efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The documents also show Parnas working very closely with frequent Fox guests Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova and their client, current-Fox contributor John Solomon.

Sean Hannity dismissed Parnas’ evidence as “the left's latest desperate attempt to smear President Trump, keep this impeachment charade alive forever. It's insane.” The Fox prime-time host attacked House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) for having “attached an addendum to the articles of impeachment. We've got new evidence! Filled with random documents from a Ukrainian-American named Lev Parnas.”