Information has been pouring out almost daily. House democrats detailed more. You know, parnas of the 11 egor wing of the crukraine conspirac who trump claims not to know but hes pictured with every member of trump world. He sure gets close to the family for someone trump supposedly doesnt know. First, Rachel Maddows sitdown interview with parnas was the interview of the week. Coming up ill talk with rachel herself about that interview but here is a preview of what he told rachel. He was somehow both employed by and employing Rudy Giuliani who helped carry out the scheme to get the president of ukraine to announce an investigation into joe bidens son. Parnas has been indicted on Campaign Finance violations for allegedly funneling russian money into political campaigns. He turned over documents to the House Committee still investigating donald trump. Those documents will make it a lot harder for Senate Republican to refuse to admit new evidence or call witnesses in the impeachment trial even as they are hell bent on acquitting the president. He implicated almost everyone in trumps circle starting with the man at the top who still is denying any wrong doing despite the growing mountain of evidence against him. President trump knew exactly what was going on. He was aware of all of my movements. He i wouldnt do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president. And then theres the guy who would take over if trump were to be removed from office. Vice president mike pence. Parnas explained how he used pence as a bargaining chip to try and pressure the ukranian president into announcing a biden investigation. In the conversation i told him that if he doesnt the announce t was the key at that time because of the inauguration, that pence wouldnt show up, nobody would show up. Unless he investigated an investigation into joe biden no officials, particularly mike pence would show up. The day after that meeting you had. This suz wasnt the 12th. I believe it was the following day that in fact, Vice President pences visit to the inauguration was cancelled. Well, it was after my phone call. You believe that Vice President pence knew what he was knew that his trip to the inauguration was contingent on those investigations being announc announc announced . Again, i mean, i know he went to poland also to discuss this on trumps behalf so he couldnt have not known. So according to parnas, mike pence knew about the get biden scheme too, which of course pence denies and he also denies knowing parnas. Right . Parnas told rachel that attorney general william barr also knew what was going on in crew yan. Do you know if mr. Giuliani was afterin contact with mr. Barr specifically about the fact that he was trying to get ukraine to announce these investigations into joe biden . Absolutely. Mr. Barr knew about that . Mr. Barr had to have known everything. Giuliani tell you he had spoken to the ukraine . They were all best friends. I mean, barr was attorney general barr was basically on the team. Of course the Justice Department says of course thats 100 false. What else are they going to say . And theres former National Security advisor john bolton who they really want to testify at the impeachment trial. When they say that mr. Bolton may have things to say about this, did mr. Bolton know that Vice President pence was supposed to secure that agreement that zelensky would announce these investigations . I know mr. Bolton was definitely involved in the loop because of the firing of ivanovich. They started butting heads. And then he explained how former secretary of Energy Rick Perry was allegedly working in tandem with giuliani. I dont know what extent he knew about me but definitely he knew about rudy because he was told he called rudy on his way there to ask him what to discuss and rudy told him that to make sure to give him the message. Mr. Giuliani told secretary perry what you need to convey to the ukranian government is they need to announce an investigation into joe biden. Absolutely. There was another conversation that perry called after the inauguration telling that he spoke to zelensky and hes going to do it. Parnas also told rachel that the secretary of state mike pompeo was privy to the plan to remove ivanovich. Then rudy came back and he told them, go speak to pompeo. Rudy went to speak to pompeo. They got into it. So the trump lackeys implicated by parnas extend beyond the Investigative Branch too. He had this to say about the republican Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee devyn nun es. Does it strike you inappropriate a he would be one of the lead investigators. I was in shock when i saw nunes sitting up there and i text my attorney, i said, i cant believe this is happening. Because . Because they were involved in getting all this stuff from biden. And surprise, the new documents released last night by House Democrats show that nunes and his staff communicated extensively with parnas about ukraine aid. Trump lawyers also knew about the pressure campaign. Parnas mentioned trumps personal lawyers who represented trump during the Mueller Probe and jay sekulow as well as White House House pet. He got rudy on the phone and basically they came up with the situation that said that because i worked for rudy and because i worked for victoria, and because rudy worked for the president we have threeway privilege and that basically pat was going to be writing a letter to congress saying nobody is cooperating and that would protect us under the same order and he would follow up with that. Again, this was the president of the United States so i thought, okay. Of course it all comes back to trump. When you say that the president knew about your movements and knew what you were doing, are you saying specifically, i want to sort of drill down on that, that the president was aware that you and mr. Giuliani were working on this effort in ukraine to basically try to hurt joe bidens political career . Yeah, it was all about joe biden, hunter biden and also rudy had a personal thing with the manafort stuff. The black ledger and that was another thing that they were looking into, but it was never about corruption, it was never it was strictly about the hunter biden and joe biden. And so to sum it all up im going to use a famous quote by mr. Sondland, everybody was in the loop. The trump world and the republicans defending it will try to tell you this man is nobody who knows nothing and no one but the pictures do not lie and Rachel Maddow herself on her Ground Breaking interview, you do not want to miss it. W, you do not want to miss it woman when you take align, you have the support of a probiotic and the gastroenterologists who developed it. vo align helps to soothe your occasional digestive upsets 24 7 with a strain of bacteria you cant get anywhere else. woman you could say align puts the pro in probiotic. So where you go, the pro goes. vo go with align. The pros in digestive health. And try align gummies. With prebiotics and probiotics to help support digestive health. I need all the breaks, that i can get. At liberty butchumal cut. Liberty biberty cut. Well dub it. Liberty mutual customizes your Car Insurance so you only pay for what you need. Only pay for what you need. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Wherever we want to go, we just have to start. Autosave your way there with chase. Chase. Make more of whats yours. Teaching kids and having kids of my own. I didnt realize that having kids would be the hard part. So we planned to start ivf treatments. Now im ready for someone to call me mom. At Northwestern Mutual, our version of Financial Planning helps you live your dreams today. Find a Northwestern Mutual advisor at nm dot com. Interview with parnas wednesday night. The largest audience many the 11year history of the Rachel Maddow show. I got a chance to talk with rachel and get her take on the interview moments after her show thursday night. Take a look. Rachel maddow, first of all, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for extra time. I feel badly about not letting you get into your car but also extremely happy that youre still sitting in front of me. Do not feel bad. The chance to be on tv with joy reid at the end of my life ill tally it up and wish for more. Youre the best. I got to tell you the interview, i have to congratulate you to start with. What an amazing interview. I want to just go through very quickly some of the things that struck me just from listening to both days of this amazing interview that you were able to get with parnas and the first of them was this description that he had of being in cult world around all of these figures as being like a cult. As i heard him describe it he remientded me of michael cohen. Did you get the sense this is a guy that is a every man type of person who was intoxicated of being around that type of power. Reporter mr. Parnas and mr. Cohen have one very important thing in common that theyre both facing very serious criminal charges and i think in that case i mean, im no lawyer but from cop shows i think its helpful to be able to say to the intended audience whether its the judge or the jury or the public at large if youre trying to make your case to them, listen, i was led astray, i was in an environment that felt normal to me at the time but now i realize it was a crazy cultish thing and the scales have fallen from my eyes and now i siee things as they really are. In my cop show version of how persons try to get themselves lean yens, thats one thing. Parnas was a key fixer, had a key role in advancing the joe biden malfeasance allegation and trying to turn that into an announcement of an investigation by the ukranian government. He was also super super involved in the Marie Ivanovich must be fired smear campaign. I asked mr. Parnas if he believed the allegations against ivanovich and the allegations against biden that he helped effectuate and in both daises he said i realize they are not true but at the time i thought they were true. He apologized and he said he doesnt have to say that stuff. He could just say i dont know but i regret being part of it. He could just theres no reason for him to, you know, repent and recant on those things. Having those views of ivanovich and biden isnt going to help him either in his court case or in Public Opinion so i sort of believe him on that scale, but im trying to maintain healthy skepticism about all of it. Yeah, absolutely. And believe they were true and was willing to work with knowingly corrupt officials in ukraine who were saying we will trade you proof or evidence of joe biden having done something wrong but we want one thing very specifically. We want this one person gone, marie van siivanovich situation. Why couldnt donald trump just fire ivanovich . He had the power to do it but instead of just firing her there were all these steps that had to be gone through to smear her. It reminded me of these attempts to fire mueller. Donald trump has a problem getting done what he wants because people who are supposedly loyal to him dont do what he says. And he wont do stuff directly. I mean, his catch phrase is youre fired but he doesnt fire people directly. The closest he comes is firing people via his phone on twitter. He doesnt actually do it. He could have summoned Marie Ivanovich to his office and said youre fired. He could have directed for her to be fired in a way that was, you know, ive lost confidence in you and i dont mean to explain myself. He could have done any of those things. Instead people would tell him bad things about vivanovich and he would rage behind closed doors and say you fire her to people who had no power to fire her and then it came through channels and filtering through the system as the president s wishes without anything real about why she was being fired. Ultimately people found ways to stop it. This whole tale sheds light on two things. As you said it sheds light on why they needed the smear campaign. They thought if there was a Public Smear Campaign in the u. S. Press about ivanovich that would both enable the president to potentially fire her by tweet and it might clear the way to sort of collapse all of the normal channels so that he could fire her regardless of whatever her ridiculous causes were. But the other thing that it sheds light on is the state Department Needs to turn documents over to the impeachment investigation. Republicans should be interested in this and the deep state conspirator yal republicans should be interested in that too. Got me thinking there were people inside the government who were working against the president s wishes. If the president was trying to fire an ambassador and unable to do it you guys should want to figure out what was going on in the state department when they were reacting to these outbursts that werent followed up on. You would think that congress would be interested in looking in their roan ranks because the other thing that was striking and kind of amazing to hear parnas talk about were actual le lekted and want to be elected members of congress who were shaw involved in this scheme whether it was devnunes or i wor if it complicates the senate. Names someone who was potentially in the know or briefed on whatever dirt they were bringing with joe biden. And the question with senator graham, the way parnas tells the sor story, it was high level effort to try to get this corrupt you cra ukranian a visa to come in so he could do a briefing on big bad joe biden to william barr and lindsey graham. Again, this is one of these interesting things about the state departments role here who is murky and more interesting all the time. He never came to the United States. That in person briefing never happened but did senator graham know that he was supposed to get that . Does that affect his thinking about this as a potential scandal whatsoever . Who about attorney general barr . I mean, there were a number of people who. Reporter brought into this scheme by the core players who one of the core players is now willing to name names about and if those questions would answer questions about how they see it particularly under oath i think wed all be further along in understanding the reality. You mentioned bill barr. What did you make of him saying hes afraid of the doj . Over the two parts of the interview his comments about william barr were among the things that kind of have stuck with me and kept me up. Not only was he describing william barr as being fully apprised of what was going on in ukraine and mr. Parnas said it was not at all surprising that the president on the phone with president zelensky said yeah, you need to do these investigation, parnas thought that was absolutely to be expected given the degree that given the degree of involvement that barr had of the scheme describing him as part of the team but then also once he arrested and charged federally in a department of justice federal indictment mr. Parnas came to believe and came to worry that mr. Barr was maybe the greatest threat to him not just because he was facing federal charges but because he believed and he thinks that other people in the president s immediate circle believe that president that turn general bill barr is essentially a weapon, is using the Justice Department as a weapon to enforce things for the president and to attack the president s political enemies and that is mr. Parnas stating his belief and his perception and should be taken just for that but it is chilling. Its chilling for anybody, we all live in a world where he is the top law enforce mts officer. Before i let you go, for the three people who didnt read blowout were talking more and more about the foreign corruption of our elections, how much of an eyebrow raiser was it for you for him to say ill get you dirt and get me out of my charges and this is the guy he turns to for help. Some of this has been publicly reported before that the reason he appears to have gotten involved is some sort of plan quid pro quo involving his case, hes facing very serious federal bribery and corruption charges. They have been trying to extradite him to the United States to face those charges for years. Hes hired the best legal help that money can guy to pro vent him from being extradited to face those charges. Hes perceived to be the kremlins man in ukraine. He is an Upper Echelon of organized crime. I mean, this is a powerful and connected guy and theres been reporting before as to how he ended up in this scandal but to hear somebody right in the middle decipher his handwritten notes and this trade that they were promising him that he could get his case dropped and in exchange he would help with these allegations against biden, i mean, that is thats i mean, thats a movie, number one, but the fact that we know that they did actually succeed in getting an audience with the attorney general of the United States william barr to talk about the case is again, chilling and it should be noted that while mr. Furtsash is fighting extra diagnosifight extradition he is still in vienna. Rudy giuliani still appears to be involved with him. So you know, watch the space. Watch the space. Absolutely. Well, i will say, first of all, thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the extra time. Of course. I think the senate could create the Rachel Maddow list of witnesses because youve put them all on the table and if they cant get witnesses they could play the entire interview with parnas. That might be the best case they could make in the impeachment trial. Anybody is free to use the material however they want. I do however, suggest real depositions. Thank you, my friend. Really appre