To the Editor:

Re “Key Figure in Effort to Pressure Ukraine Says Trump Knew ‘Everything’” (news article, Jan. 16):

Lev speaks! The phrase “what did he know and when did he know it?” is often bandied about whenever a high-ranking government official is accused of wrongdoing. In the case of Donald J. Trump and Ukraine, the president knew everything, and knew it from the very beginning because he set it in motion.

In interviews with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and with The New York Times, Lev Parnas, the indicted Soviet-born associate of Rudy Giuliani, left no doubt that Mr. Trump knew “everything,” and Mike Pence and Bill Barr were involved in a criminal conspiracy that attempted to pressure the young Ukrainian president to announce investigations of Joe and Hunter Biden that could have unfairly influenced our 2020 election.

This new evidence is accompanied by documents that Mr. Parnas recently turned over to the House Intelligence Committee, which will undoubtedly be used by the Democratic House managers when Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial begins in the Senate. The only question that remains unanswered is how many Republican senators will vote to uphold their oath of office and how many will continue to support the criminal in the Oval Office.

Henry A. Lowenstein

New York