Lev Parnas called out Republican lawmakers for “doing the bidding” of Russia during the House Oversight Committee’s hearing Wednesday in the GOP impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden.
Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani, worked closely with the former Trump attorney to dig up dirt on Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.
He appeared as a witness for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee alongside Hunter Biden’s former business partners Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis.
Parnas told the Oversight committee that there was no evidence of Biden family corruption involving Ukraine and that the accusation came from the Russians.
Asked by ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), how he and Giuliani were “able to take these false allegations, peddled by corrupt officials and Russian agents, and promote and amplify them here in the United States, in our political system,” Parnas said they had help from Republican members of Congress and conservative media.
“Most media groups — I’d probably say all, except for Fox and a few other right-wing media groups — didn’t want to take any of the information, and that aggravated Rudy Giuliani and John Solomon and other players,” Parnas said. “And the main group that it was being pushed through was Fox — Sean Hannity and some other media personalities over there.”
“But then there was also other people that were doing the bidding for the Russians — people in Congress, like Sen. Ron Johnson, like Congressman Pete Sessions, who sits here right now,” Parnas said, adding that the congressman “was with me from the very beginning on this journey, into finding of the, giving dirt on Joe Biden.”
“Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Senator Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” he said. “The same goes for John Solomon, Sean Hannity and media personnel, particularly with Fox News, who use this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 elections. Sadly, they are still doing this today as we approach the 2024 elections.”
Parnas was indicted and sentence to 20 months in prison in connection with convictions on campaign finance, wire fraud and false statements in 2022.
The indictment said Parnas and his former associate Igor Fruman lobbied a congressman to have former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch removed from her post and were “committed to raise $20,000 or more” for said congressman.
This congressman was later identified as Sessions.
Sessions denied any “wrongdoing” at the time, telling the Hill in a statement, “I could not have had any knowledge of the scheme described in the indictment or have involvement or coordination of it.”
“I have been friends with Rudy Giuliani for more than 30 years,” he added. “I do not know what his business or legal activities in Ukraine have been.”