Thread by @VickyPJWard

EXCLUSIVE: At last year's WH Hanukkah party, Lev Parnas & Igor Fruman had a private meeting w Trump & Giuliani during which Trump tasked the two men with “a secret mission” to pressure the Ukrainian gov't to investigate Joe & Hunter Biden, sources say. cnn.com/2019/11/15/pol…

The party—during which Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani—was the day after Giuliani brought Parnas as his guest to the funeral of former president George H.W. Bush.

In the days following the meeting, Parnas insinuated to two people that he clearly believed he’d been given a special assignment by the President—like some sort of “James Bond mission,” according to one of the people.

This new reporting puts the president firmly in the Lev Parnas/Igor Fruman camp much earlier than the July 25th phone call. What it shows is that there was an idea of the quid pro quo—“what are we going to do about Ukraine?”—all the way back in December.

That December meeting at the White House is not even the first report of Parnas and the President discussing Ukraine.

WaPo's @PostRoz @mattzap @thamburger @jdawsey1 reported that at an April ’18 fundraiser, Parnas told Trump that Yovanovitch was unfriendly to him and his interests. Trump allegedly suggested that Yovanovitch should be fired. A year later, she was recalled. washingtonpost.com/politics/at-do…

According to @rebeccaballhaus @AlanCullison @brett_forrest, Parnas & Fruman met with Petro Poroshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko in Feb. They extended Poroshenko an invitation for a State dinner, if he would commit to publicly opening investigations into Ukraine.
wsj.com/articles/giuli…

I also report on another separate encounter—not previously disclosed—between Parnas and Trump at an August 2018 at a fundraiser for then- Republican congresswoman Claudia Tenney in upstate New York.

"I don't know them," Trump has said of Parnas and Fruman. "I don't know about them. I don't know what they do but I don't know—maybe they were clients of Rudy. You'd have to ask Rudy, I just don't know."

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment to a series of questions regarding the meeting and Trump’s relationship with Parnas and Fruman.

Guiliani’s lawyer rejects Parnas’s claims of being put on a “James Bond” style mission, saying that Parnas is “no Sean Connery” and that he suffers from “delusions of grandeur.”

Lev Parnas used to “worship” Trump, whom he sometimes called "the big guy" in conversation. Now he feels differently. Since his arrest, sources say he’s signaled that he’s willing to cooperate with the Congressional impeachment inquiry. There are shades here of Michael Cohen...