Trump said Thursday that he doesn’t know Parnas at all, and dismissed the existence of photos of him and Parnas together, saying he takes pictures with “thousands of people including today that I didn’t meet.”

He accused Parnas, who was indicted in October over an alleged campaign finance scheme, of trying to “make a deal for himself.”

“I don’t know who this man is,” Trump said. “Oftentimes I’ll be taking a picture with somebody and say, I wonder what newspaper that one will appear in. I don’t know him. Perhaps he’s a fine man. Perhaps he’s not. I know nothing about him.”

Trump has made an effort to distance himself from Parnas in the past. In October, after Parnas and his Florida-based partner, Igor Fruman, were indicted, the president denied knowing either of Giuliani’s associates.

Trump on Thursday also said he had no knowledge of a May 2019 letter from Giuliani to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was part of a trove of documents that was turned over by Parnas and released by lawmakers this week.

In the letter, which was obtained from Parnas’ cell phone, Giuliani asked for a half-hour meeting with Zelensky as he was seeking investigations that could boost Trump's domestic political interests. And Giuliani made clear that he was acting with Trump’s “knowledge and consent” and in his capacity as a “personal” attorney for the president.

The sentiment ran counter to Trump's recent claims that he pushed for the probes on behalf of the U.S. government.

“I didn’t know about his specific letter, but if he wrote a letter, it wouldn’t have been a big deal," Trump said on Thursday. "Rudy was always — it was very important to Rudy that I be a great president, and that’s OK with me. It was very important to a lot of people because our country was going to hell. And now our country is on a path that we haven’t seen in decades and decades.”



