It’s hard to believe that it has been two and a half weeks since I wrote Lev Parnas Could Be the Star Witness Who Takes Trump Down. It seems like yesterday, but the hearings in the House Intelligence Committee concluded with nary a mention of Parnas. And it wasn’t for a lack of trying by the fraudster’s lawyers.

Way back on October 15, I delved into the criminal career of Lev Parnas in a piece called It Looks Like Giuliani Took Russian Money, and I began calling this the biggest political scandal in American history. Since then, Parnas has been turning up everywhere like some kind of evil Forrest Gump. When Giuliani sat down on July 19 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC to discuss his conspiracy theories with Ambassador Kurt Volker, Parnas was there.  On August 2, when Giuliani traveled to Madrid to pressure Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak to investigate the Bidens, Parnas was there. When Giuliani held private strategy meetings at the Trump International Hotel with The Hill reporter John Solomon, a top staffer to Rep. Devin Nunes, and lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, Parnas was there. When diGenova and Toensing traveled to Vienna, Austria to help Russia-aligned Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash fight extradition to the United States, Parnas was there serving as their translator.

Apparently, he was also in a May meeting in Kyiv where he stood in for Giuliani after the former NYC mayor felt compelled to cancel his trip.

The meeting in Kiev in May occurred after Mr. Giuliani, with Mr. Parnas’s help, had planned a trip there to urge Mr. Zelensky to pursue the investigations. Mr. Giuliani canceled his trip at the last minute, claiming he was being “set up.”

Only three people were present at the meeting: Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman and Serhiy Shefir, a member of the inner circle of Mr. Zelensky, then the Ukrainian president-elect. The sit-down took place at an outdoor cafe in the days before Mr. Zelensky’s May 20 inauguration, according to a person familiar with the events. The men sipped coffee and spoke in Russian, which is widely spoken in Ukraine, the person said.

According to Parnas, here is the message he delivered in that meeting:

The associate, Lev Parnas, told a representative of the incoming government that it had to announce an investigation into Mr. Trump’s political rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his son, or else Vice President Mike Pence would not attend the swearing-in of the new president, and the United States would freeze aid, the lawyer said.

Parnas’s “Fraud Guarantee” associate Igor Fruman denies that this message was delivered. Mr. Shefir gave a more qualified denial.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Shefir acknowledged meeting with Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. But he said they had not raised the issue of military aid. Mr. Shefir said he briefed the incoming president on the meeting. Mr. Shefir was a business partner and longtime friend whom Mr. Zelensky appointed as his chief adviser on the first day of his presidency…

…The statement from Mr. Shefir, issued in response to an inquiry from The New York Times, did not directly address Mr. Parnas’s claims that he had delivered an ultimatum about American aid in general and Mr. Pence’s attendance at the inauguration. A representative for Mr. Zelensky did not respond to a request for further comment.

It should be noted that Mr. Fruman is represented by John Dowd who served for a long period as President Trump’s lead lawyer during the Mueller probe. As for Parnas, his lawyer continues to up the ante in terms of what his client is willing to tell Congress. Now he’s offering to implicate Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

A lawyer for an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani tells CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee had in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden.

The attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, represents Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who worked with Giuliani to push claims of Democratic corruption in Ukraine. Bondy said that Parnas was told directly by the former Ukrainian official that he met last year in Vienna with Rep. Devin Nunes.

“Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December,” said Bondy.

Shokin was ousted from his position in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including then-vice president Biden, over concerns that Shokin was not pursuing corruption cases…

…Bondy tells CNN that his client and Nunes began communicating around the time of the Vienna trip. Parnas says he worked to put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians who could help Nunes dig up dirt on Biden and Democrats in Ukraine, according to Bondy.

That information would likely be of great interest to House Democrats given its overlap with the current impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and could put Nunes in a difficult spot.

Devin Nunes is threatening to sue CNN and The Daily Beast for reporting what Joseph Bondy told them about his client, but Nunes routinely threatens to sue people (even the operator of a Twitter account purporting to be his cow).

It goes without saying that Parnas, who has been indicted for funneling “hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors to U.S. government officials and political action committees,” is not a credible witness. Nothing he says should be automatically believed and even if he tells the truth, it will be easy to raise doubts about his accounts. He’s only going to valuable in areas where his testimony can be independently corroborated.

Still, he knows everything about Rudy Giuliani’s activities, including his pursuit of liquified natural gas deals in Ukraine for which, the Wall Street Journal reports he is presently under investigation by the Southern District of New York.

Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Rudy Giuliani stood to profit personally from a Ukrainian natural-gas business pushed by two associates who also aided his efforts there to launch investigations that could benefit President Trump, people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pitched their new company, and plans for a Poland-to-Ukraine pipeline carrying U.S. natural gas, in meetings with Ukrainian officials and energy executives this year, saying the project had the support of the Trump administration, according to people briefed on the meetings. In many of the same meetings, the two men also pushed for assistance on investigations into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and alleged interference by Ukraine in the 2016 U.S. election, some of the people said.

Let me put it like this: if, as John Bolton said, Rudy Giuliani is a hand grenade, then Lev Parnas is the pin.