Not sure if article requires a sub. Here’s the main part:
"But down in literally the last paragraph is something I’d never heard before and I don’t think has been reported elsewhere. Parnas and Fruman (with Giuliani to arrive via a separate flight, apparently) were on their way to Vienna to handle logistics for a blockbuster interview Viktor Shokin (the notorious fired prosecutor) was going to do on Hannity!
Here’s the passage …
Two weeks ago when they were arrested, Parnas and Fruman were preparing to fly to Vienna, Austria, to meet Giuliani and another key figure in the impeachment investigation, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, according to four sources familiar with their trip. Shokin is the same Ukrainian official who former Vice President Joe Biden — along with other Western leaders — had pushed to have removed over concerns he wasn’t prosecuting corruption
While questions in Washington swirl around Shokin’s role in this controversy, Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman had specific plans for the former Ukrainian official up until the day of their arrest. According to those four sources, they told others they were headed to Vienna to help with a planned interview the next day: Shokin, they said, was scheduled to do an interview from the Austrian capital with Sean Hannity.
It is all rather byzantine of course. So a bit more unpacking is required.
Giuliani and his two pals had connected up with Firtash who was ready to use his vast power and influence in Ukraine to put a bullseye on the Bidens. That was in exchange for help getting charges dropped against him in the US. (He’s in Austria fighting extradition to the US on those charges.) Firtash got Shokin to swear out an affidavit making a series of maximal accusations against the Bidens – namely that he had been close to exposing Hunter and Joe Biden’s crimes and that was why Biden got him fired. Giuliani and John Solomon had been hawking that affidavit everywhere in the weeks before Parnas and Fruman’s arrest. (I wrote about it here a month ago.)
In other words, getting Shokin lined up to do this interview maybe wasn’t quite the whole enchilada – that was going to be the CNN interview with Zelensky which Sondland and Trump and Rudy were making a condition of military aide. But it was still a pretty big one. This certainly would have had the effect of mainlining the Giuliani/Ukraine conspiracy theories right into the US body politic.
If CNN is right about this, a big part of the Giuliani/Firtash disinformation campaign was going to drop just one day later – until the FBI scooped up Parnas and Fruman at Dulles airport."
I was talking to a coworker at work tonight about Lindsay being compromised. He has an interesting take that may make sense. He doesn’t think Lindsay is compromised. He thinks Trump is promising him to be VP in 2020 as long as he backs him on everything. His reasoning is Trump never really praises Pence and thinks he’s weak. I don’t buy it b/c I think Lindsay has skeletons in his closet but you never know.