Lev Parnas claims Fox’s John Solomon was involved in plot to fight extradition of Ukrainian oligarch in order to discredit Mueller investigation
“I was given certain documents by Solomon to validate to Firtash that I was in the loop”
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From the January 15, 2020, edition of MSNBC's Maddow
RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): Can I stop you there for a second? So the allegation, as you understood it, was that Andrew Weissmann, one of the prosecutors working on the Mueller team, had made -- had had an interaction with Dimitri Firtash who was under indictment by the Justice Department, who was fighting extradition here, and that interaction Mr. Solomon was saying would be something scandalous that would discredit the Mueller investigation.
LEV PARNAS: Correct. So we were tasked basically with trying to establish a relationship.
MADDOW: Specifically to get information to try to discredit the Mueller investigation.
PARNAS: Absolutely, yeah, and basically I was given certain documents by John Solomon that would validate to Dimitri Firtash that I was in the loop and that I knew what was going on, because Mr. Firstash is a gentleman that just doesn't see anybody. And it's, you know, it's impossible to even get to meet with him. For us to be able to receive information from Firtash, we had to promise Firtash something. So for Firtash, it was basically telling him that we knew his case was worthless here and that he's being prosecuted for no reason and that basically it could get taken care of.
MADDOW: That was your offer to Mr. Firtash, that we can get this prosecution of you dropped.
PARNAS: Your extradition case, correct. Yeah, so that was basically the situation at that point.
MADDOW: So the exchange with Mr. Firtash was going to be “you provide us information that will be detrimental to the public perception of the Mueller investigation, and we, in turn, will get your case dropped at DOJ. So you won't get extradited to the United States anymore."
PARNAS: That's how it began.
MADDOW: And Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing, were going to become his lawyers to effectuate this trade?
PARNAS: Correct.
MADDOW: And you were supposed to broker this?
PARNAS: Correct.