$325,000 donation was received from an energy company parnas and fruman recently formed. and joining us again, emily larson, let s begin with lev parnas agreeing to congressional requests for records and possibly testimony. what do you make, emily, of this move by parnas and his attorneys? well, i think that parnas is concerned about being held in contempt of congress, and you know there s a lot of people that the house committees want to speak to, but are declining to appear for testimony, and sort of a strategy of the president and his allies to delay and fight against the impeachment inquiry. but you know, parnas, this is a person who i can assume was frustrated by being arrested for the alleged campaign finance violations, having to do with his donation to trump group, and
inquiry continues. this will be further evidence of an effort by the administration to obstruct the lawful and constitutional duties of congress. this will only further add to the body of evidence on a potential obstruction of congress charge against the president. our nbc news has learned that lev parnas, the indicted ukrainian businessman with ties to rudy giuliani is preparing to comply with requests for records and testimony from congressional impeachment investigators, according to his attorney. the news was first reported by reuters. it s a 180 for parns a who last month rebuffed a request for documents and information from committees. parnas is a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. parnas s attorney is refuting president trump s claim that he does not know parnas. in a statement to the washington post, the attorney says in part, that quote any
being looking at the public record of the president and partners together, during intimate dinners, waving to each other at rallies, taking pictures together and parnas s alleged involvement with the president s lawyer rudy giuliani, could define that the president and parnas knew each other. if the president really did not know mr. parnas, it would imply a degree of ignorance that we are not prepared to attribute to him. photos posted to social media of parnas and his associate igor fruman indicted, show they have several interactions with the president since parnas first made a sizable donation to the trump campaign in 200016, including a dinner that was tended by 20 people at the trump hotel in washington by 15 people, and that was organized by the pro-trump super pack america first and attended by trump and don trump jr. and this photo was deleted the next day. and the following among a
then the president immediately tried to distance himself from him, and regardless of whether the president remembered interacting with him, i think that could be frustrating for parnas, so his attorney says he will invoke the fifth amendment, if there is something that he feels like he can t answer without incriminating himself, but it would be very beneficial to democrats, on these committees, to get more information about what exactly he was working on with rudy giuliani, when they were looking for information about joe biden and other democrats in ukraine that could be damaging to them. let s circle back for a moment to the republican push to try and reveal the whistle-blower s identity. many trump officials say he has no right to stay hidden as we played in some of the clips earlier. how is this going to affect the impeachment process? well, i don t think that these calls for outing the whistle-blower are going to go away. you know, the whistle-blower is