'Pence had to know': Vice president dragged into Trump impeachment scandal by indicted associate

A Soviet-born associate to Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has directly implicated Mike Pence in the Ukraine scandal, insisting the vice president was aware of demands for political investigations that sparked the president's impeachment.

Lev Parnas, a key subject in the impeachment saga who has been accused of working with Mr Giuliani to remove the former US ambassador to Ukraine from her post, said Mr Pence “couldn’t have not known” about the administration’s demands in a new interview.

Quoting US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s key impeachment testimony, Mr Parnas told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “Everybody was in the loop.”

“I know [the vice president] went to Poland also to discuss this on Trump’s behalf, so he couldn’t have not known,” Mr Parnas said in the interview released on Wednesday night. “He was supposed to go there and get it straightened out that [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was supposed to make another announcement, and that didn’t happen.”

Mr Parnas went on to claim the vice president then cancelled his scheduled trip to Ukraine because Mr Zelensky had not announced investigations into one of Mr Trump’s 2020 political rivals, Joe Biden. A partial transcript of the president’s 25 July phone call with Mr Zelensky released by the White House showed him asking his Ukrainian counterpart for a “favour” shortly before encouraging he launch the probes.

An impeachment inquiry was sparked after an anonymous whistleblower filed an official complaint about that phone call.

Mr Trump has been accused of withholding crucial military aid to Ukraine and an important White House visit with the country’s new president as it fought a war with Russia while demanding Mr Zelensky announce the political probes to seemingly undermine Mr Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 elections.

“The aid itself was something that I think the president decided to do”, Mr Parnas added. “It was, I think, a reaction to that there was no announcement being made after so many attempts and so many promises.”

Mr Parnas’ latest interview adds further speculation as to whether Mr Pence was involved in those demands, just as the impeachment trial was set to begin in the US Senate.

Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff, denied the allegations in a statement criticising Mr Parnas’ credibility.

“Democrat witnesses have testified under oath in direct contradiction to Lev Parnas statements last night”, Mr Short reportedly said.

He added: “This is very simple: Lev Parnas is under a multi-count indictment and will say anything to anybody who will listen in hopes of staying out of prison. It’s no surprise that only the liberal media is listening to him.”