Let's get one thing out of the way: Lev Parnas might be making himself useful now, but he's got no business wearing that flag pin. It's almost like wearing a small metal figurine on your lapel doesn't actually say anything about your commitment to the American national interest. (cc: 2008.) These Trumpworld creatures who head for the ratlines are basically all the same: guys who would do anything for The Boss until they get caught, at which point they are Just Trying to Do the Right Thing and, perhaps, stay alive. You don't simply give two weeks notice when you're operating in the underworld.

Still, Parnas seemed fairly forthright in his interview Wednesday night with Rachel Maddow, and he made some logical points. Why, indeed, would the President of Ukraine's inner circle meet with him unless he represented the American president? But there's no reason to take Parnas's word alone on anything. Luckily, for some of it, you don't need to just take his word: he supplied a ton of texts that show a deep and extensive relationship with Rudy Giuliani, Trump's point man on the Ukrainian ratfucking.

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Other texts appear to point to a surveillance and intimidation campaign—to accompany the smear campaign—against former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was an obstacle to the Trumpist ratfucking over there. Parnas threw cold water on the notion the erratic Trump ally texting him, Robert Hyde, was doing all he said he was with respect to Yovanovitch. Still, the Ukrainian government has announced it's opening an investigation. Meanwhile, Hyde is running for the United States Congress.

The real headline, however, was Parnas's claim that President Trump "knew exactly what was going on." Again, you can't just take his word for it, though he did offer an explanation—that Rudy Giuliani, frequent butt-dialer, would in Parnas's presence jump on the horn with Trump on speakerphone to tell him about the plot, or that Trump would yell-talk so loud Parnas could hear him—that dovetails with what we knew previously. Parnas also unequivocally sought to rope in Vice President Mike Pence, suggesting he canceled his Ukraine trip as part of the quid pro quo. And then he really roped in Trump's pet toad, Attorney General William Barr: "Mr. Barr absolutely knew everything," Parnas said, before offering a caveat. “I mean, It’s impossible [that he didn’t]." But then he doubled down: "Attorney General Barr was basically on the team." Everyone knew about the Ukraine operation, and everyone—including the Ukrainians—knew it was about ratfucking Biden.

Parnas and Giuliani attended the funeral of George H.W. Bush together in 2018. ALEX EDELMAN Getty Images

If you're keeping score at home, this henchman just roped in the President of the United States, the vice president, the attorney general, and of course, the president's personal lawyer. Seems bad! Or maybe, as Trump and his allies will soon suggest, he's just lying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. It's unclear how lying publicly at length will do that, but maybe so! Those same folks will also say they don't know Parnas—he's a coffee boy! In fact, it's already begun with the president and with Kellyanne Conway. So here's a photo of Parnas with her. Here's one with Trump, Pence, and Giuliani. Here's one with Trump Junior and a major Republican fundraiser.

And then there's Devin Nunes. The California congressman kicked off the Trump Era by sneaking onto the White House grounds—after switching Ubers! spy shit!—to receive intel from an administration official geared towards propping up the president's spurious claim he was "spied" on during the campaign. Nunes, then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was theoretically supposed to provide oversight of the administration—not run interference for them. By the time the Ukraine fiasco hit, the House Republicans were in the minority, so Nunes was the ranking member of the committee. Still, it would have been nice for him to mention, while he sat next to Adam Schiff overseeing the hearings, that he had been in contact with a core operator in the scheme. No wonder Nunes spent the entire time reading off batshit conspiracy theories to create clips packaged for Facebook and Fox News.

Anyway, all this led to a hilarious public face plant from Nunes, who always looks like a cow stuck in the headlights anyway.

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So now Devin Nunes is admitting he talked to Lev Parnas... He claims when he was asked a few months back, he didn’t recognize the name Parnas pic.twitter.com/3dgoGfsKFd — Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) January 16, 2020

He didn't recognize the name! Could have been any Lev, any Parnas. His office gets a lot of phone calls! Suddenly he remembers talking to the guy he said he didn't talk to.

Contrast this rambling asshole with what Parnas had to say about him.

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If Nunes had any shame, he would resign—but of course, he's only there because he doesn't. I think often about something historian Douglas Brinkley said to me for a piece on Trump's Great American Heist: "It's by nature almost impossible for Trump to build an administration of quality," he said. "It's not about good governance or ethics or even dead-rock patriotism. It's about full-bore allegiance to him, to Trump."

As this era has worn on, the president's allies in his administration and in Congress have steadily declined in quality, as anyone with even a modicum of competence or shame has jumped ship. He lost the Adults in the Room in his Cabinet, not that they were doing much good anyway. Ex-Speaker Paul Ryan, an anti-government extremist with at least a modicum of primal cleverness, has quit and been replaced with the comically incompetent Kevin McCarthy. (The House Republican leader also has a photo with Parnas.) The intelligence has steadily leaked out of the Republican side of government, and all that's left is Devin Nunes. Rudy Giuliani—a man who appears in similar cognitive decline to the president's—is running Stupid Black-Ops in the post-Soviet world. The only intelligent ally Trump has left is the megalomaniacal Mitch McConnell, who is ruthlessly effective in part because of his incredible shamelessness.



Time will tell if the latest Trumpian turncoat will make a lick of difference. History says no. Maybe the sheer stupidity and public shamelessness of all the corruption will anesthetize the American public once again—although support for removing the president from office was at 52 percent before his Ukraine henchman formally roped him into the plot on national TV. Again, maybe Parnas is lying, but it's unlikely federal investigators will give him a sweetheart plea deal for spouting off false information about the president. Maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has all these sketchballs in his orbit because he is a fucking mobster who operates on the principles of force, leverage, and the steadfast belief that the rules do not apply to him.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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