Passing is always going to be a very, very big deal, let alone one as revered as former president george h. W. Bush. One of the things that was remarkable about his funeral last year were the pictures from the funeral. Do you remember this shot . Rosalyn carter next to jimmy carter next to Michelle Obama and barack obama, next to melania trump, next to donald trump, all there together, the Vice President s and their families sitting behind them. You just dont see that in real life. Thats like flipping through a history book, right . Except there they all are on the same page in the same place, at the same time all together. You never see that. President bushs funeral is he National Cathedral was a huge affair. It wasnt just president s and Vice President s and their families. It was everyone imaginable in u. S. Politics. One of the weirder things we have since learned about the attendance of that funeral is that when former new york city mayor Rudy Giuliani decided that he would attend that funeral, he brought with him a date, a most unusual date. The bush family has since pronounced themselves, quote, disappointed to learn that the man who Rudy Giuliani brought to poppy bushs funeral at the National Cathedral in washington was lev parnas, now famous as one of Rudy Giulianis two associates who was just last week arrested at Dulles Airport with a oneway ticket out of that country. He was charged with a scheme to funnel illegal foreign donations to the president s reelection effort into a number of different republican campaigns. Well, since those arrests, the picture that has unfolded about mr. Parnas, about Rudy Giulianis date for the poppy bush funeral, it started bad, but its gotten very dark very fast. Here, for example, is darrell samuelson. On october 2018, the owner of a property in florida in which lev was living told parnas he needed to leave. When the men began to argue and the owner told parnas he would call the police, parnas told the man, quote, if you call the cops, theyre not going to find you, ever. Thats according to a petition for a restraining order that was subsequently filed in court in south florida. That restraining order petition was obtained by these politico reporters. According to court filings, despite that, they will never find you ever threat, three days later, quote, the men met again to discuss the matter further. According to the restraining order petition, this time it went even worse. Quote, lev parnas held a gun to the mans head and said, this is my last warning to you. He then, according to the court filing, got into his car, a dark blue porsche, and he drove off. We know from another court motion that soon thereafter on halloween night, police found mr. Parnas and seized at least three guns from him, including a 40 caliber glock, a 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol and a. 38 revolver. In what is turning out to be sort of the criminal prosecution offshoot to the ongoing proceedings against President Trump, some of the mystery here, some of the weirdness here is finally start to come into focus after a week or so of starting to figure out who this cast of characters is. I mean, first you should know this particular guy, the one who went to the george h. W. Bush funeral as the guest of Rudy Giuliani, the guy with the gun to the head restraining order filings in florida, hes the only one of these four guys who were charged in this criminal case who apparently has not made bail. Interesting. His friend, igor, did. Igor is out on 1 million bail after some initial confusion as to the bail status of these guys, we actually talked with the reporter who told us that with her own eyes she saw igor walk under his own power out of a federal courthouse with his lawyers. So were confident igor was ultimately bailed on 1 million bail. We also know from the arraignment of the other two defendants in this case, yesterday in Federal District court in new york the other two defendants in this case have also made basement the guy arrested in San Francisco like igor was released on 1 million bail. The guy who was at large for several days after the indictment was unsealed who was only eventually arrested just a couple of days ago after arriving at jfk airport, he too is out on bail, although his bail was set lower at 250,000. We actually got the transcript of their arraignment today and we can see from the transcript of the arraignment that the judge hearing the case he confirms the bail arrangements for all these defendants. The judge then in his interactions gives us a couple pieces of information about this case that we didnt previously have. First of all, the judge makes clear this might be a case that is a little bit sprawling. I mean, soon after an arraignment like this, its incumbent upon the prosecutors basically to share with the defendants and their lawyers, to share with the other side the evidence that prosecutors are going to use to try to prove their case against these defendants a process called discovery. You get to see what the government has against you. Well, in the arraignment in federal court yesterday afternoon, prosecutors told the judge that in this case the discovery is going to be a lot. So much so that its going to take a long time for them just to hand it all over. From the transcript, the judge says, quote, before we address scheduling, i would like to ask counsel for the government if they could briefly describe the categories and volume of discovery to be produced. Prosecutor says yes, your honor. The discovery in this case is fairly, fairly voluminous. It includes approximately 10 search warrant applications and records obtained pursuant to search warrants for over 10 email accounts which encompass multiple gigabytes of data, financial records for more than 50 Bank Accounts. Again, according to the prosecutor, quote, fairly voluminous an amount, as well as records from a number of third parties that have been produced or continue to be produced. Your honor, the governments intention is to begin discovery on a rolling basis. I know it is four guys charged in this indictment, but more than 50 Bank Accounts . Prosecutors also made clear under further questioning from the judge that seems like this is not over, that this investigation is not done. The judge says, quote, to the prosecutor, do you anticipate any superseding indictments at this point, meaning further indictments of these four defendants . Prosecutor said, your honor, i think it is fair to characterize the investigation as ongoing, but no decision about any type of additional charges has been made. We know that the governments case, prosecutors case is ongoing here because since these guys were all indicted, we know that at least one former republican congressman to whom they allegedly steered illegal Foreign Campaign kribsz contributions, Pete Sessions has received a subpoena from the same grand jury that indicted these guys. So because the grand jury still handing out subpoenas, we know this investigation is ongoing and theres the possibility of further charges against either the guys who have already been charged or against additional defendants. But now from the transcript, weve got it here from the prosecutors mouth as well. Your honor, i think it is fair to characterize the governments investigation as ongoing. In this criminal case, though, that, again, appears to be the sort of criminal prosecution that is adjacent and connected to the ongoing impeachment proceedings against the president , i find it interesting that of the four guys who were charged, only one of them appears to still be in because no not bailed out. Hes the one opt far left, the one who has in his Public Record this holding a gun to the guys head stuff from florida. Theres also been extensive public reporting on the number of Outstanding Civil fraud suits he appears to have been running from from some time. If you look at the Public Record of his past experience as a stock broker, you also find that hes been associated with at least three Financial Firms that have been shut down by financial regulators, along one with a lured, mobconnected stock scheme that involved members of the colombo crime family. Tell me again how he ended up as Rudy Giulianis date at poppy bushs funeral . Tell me also how he ended up having dinner at the white house with the sitting president of the United States. Tell me again why hes got all these different pictures of himself with the sitting president of the United States. I mean, its almost more unnerving that in addition to the pictures of himself with the president , weve also got a picture of him with the president s eldest son. The other guy besides his codefendant on the far right side of this picture and the president s son on the far left side of this picture, the other guy in this picture is a man who at the time this picture was taken was running the main super pac that is supporting President Trumps reelection efforts. Thats a super pac called America First, which itself is named in these felony allegations from federal prosecutors about these illegal Foreign Campaign donations. Were going to have more on that aspect of this case coming up in just a moment, propublica just published some eyepopping new stuff about that part of the president s reelection effort and how that might factor in here. But on capitol hill in washington, right, the impeachment thing is obviously not going very well for the president. Theres no clear sense as to who is quarterbacking the white houses defense for the proceedings. There have been somming insinuations over the last week or two that maybe it was white house chief of staff Mick Mulvaney who was running the defense to the impeachment, whether or not that was true before yesterday, its definitely not true now. Not after mr. Mulvaney strode to the white house podium and cheerfully admitted that not only, yeah, the president definitely submitted help from a Foreign Government to use against the democrats, but of course there was pressure behind it, a little trade, call it quid pro quo, whatever you want, just get over it. He boisterousously admitted yesterday that, yeah, military aid was withheld in change for these demands from the president for domestic political help against his opponents. That performance by the white house chief of staff yesterday, i mean, its scrambled republicans defense of the president s behavior. That cheerful admission from him that yeah, there was a quid pro quo. That has undermined the chief defense of the president s actions from multiple republicans in congress. I keep theyll be paying for that politically for a very long time. The other thing, though, that Mick Mulvaney set out to announce was the plan by the administration to steer what amounts to a gigantic government contract to the president s Golf Property in florida, which is called doral. Were going to talk about that a little later on tonight in the context of the impeachment inquiry because its starting to look like that itself could end up being an additional standalone article of impeachment against President Trump. Again, that is still to come just this hour. Its friday, right, so the news is like pureeing something in a blender with no lid on. Its just happening. Well get to everything, i swear. But i do want to say tonight kudos to Bloomberg News and cnn for what i think is the most important new reporting of the day, important new reporting about how this scheme for which the president is being impeached appears to have come together. Both of these two reports give us something new and very, very fundamental that makes a lot of what is otherwise been confusing suddenly seem crystal career. Lets start with bloomberg. Bloomberg reporter Stephanie Baker and arena resnick have what amounts to the scoop ive been waiting for, a scoop at a finally makes the whole cast of characters that Rudy Giuliani and the president appear to have employed here sort of makes sense as part of one cogent and rational, if potentially quite illegal story. The to do with this kremlin connected ukrainian oligarch who we have been talking about for the last few weeks in conjunction with this scandal. His name is Dmitry Firtash. For years he was the kremlin main power player in ukraine. The putin government set him up in business in ukraine as its cutout. The deals that putin set up for him made him very rich and very powerful in that country. He in turn then funded proputin Political Parties in ukraine, including funding the career of trumps nowimprisoned Campaign ChairmanPaul Manafort what he was working for proputin interests in that country. The problem is that u. S. Law enforcement considers Dmitry Firtash to be an Upper Echelon associate of russian organized crime and the Justice Department has indicted him in a gigantic bribery scandal. They want to put him on trial in the Northern District of illinois. Now, hes been under house arrest. Dmitry firtash has been out on bail, under house arrest, fighting efforts to extradite him to the United States to face felony charges. Hes been fighting those efforts for years. Ive been obsessed with this guy for a long i mean, hes the reason kind of that i wrote this book. Its weird that it just came out at the same time. This is happening with the president s impeachment. As interesting as this story is, as important as it is to understand that part of the world, what bloomberg is reporting tonight kind of makes it all fall into place. What bloomberg is reporting tonight is that the way we may have gotten ourselves into this impeachment drama we are in in this country is, when his case took a bad turn for him this summer, this thing for which the president is now being impeached seemed to sort of kick into gear. Heres what happened. This summer, a court in austria ruled in what appeared to be a final decision that this guy, Dmitry Firtash, finally had to be extraindicted to the United States to face federal bribery charges in a u. S. Court. Hes been fighting this for years. This court ruling this past summer makes it seem like its finally going to have to go. In five years of court battles, the legal team beat back u. S. Efforts to bring him to trial in illinois. The tide appeared to turn in the summer when the Justice Department won a ruling in austria securing firtashs extradition. At that point as bloomberg reports tonight, firtash essentially hit the panic button in his case, or at least decided he was going to put plan b into action. Up until that point, his highest profile u. S. Lawyer had been a man named lanny davis, which might have made sense for a while for mr. Firtash, but after mr. Davis became publicly associated with Michael Cohen, President Trumps onetime personal lawyer who famously turned against President Trump, one lanny davis and Michael Cohen were an antitrump force out there in the world, that no longer was a good look for mr. Firtashs defense efforts. To mr. Firtash after that ruling that said he was going to get extraindicted to the United States, when he put into effect plan b, when he hit the panic alarm and changed gears in terms of how he was trying to avoid trial in the United States, he got rid of lanny davis and, quote, shuffled his lawyers, dropped lanny davis and added these two protrump tv lawyers whom bloomberg describes as vocal supporters who worked with Rudy Giuliani. Putins guy in ukraine connected to the russian mob, very, very, very very rich, very powerful fears hes finally going to lose his extradition fight and ends up in court. He dumps his lawyers who might be seen as antitrump, picks up fox news lawyers who are very protrump and who specifically have connections to giuliani. What else can he do to try to help his case to stop the u. S. Justice department from extraindicting hextr extraditing him and putting him on trial . He believed he had one other card to play. From block, associates of Dmitry Firtash were working to dig up dirt on former Vice President joe biden last summer in an effort to get Rudy Giulianis help in the oligarchs legal case. That is according to three people familiar with the exchanges. Disney free firtash charged with conspiracy by the United States and living in vienna shuffled lawyers, local supporters of President Trump who worked with Rudy Giuliani. Around that time, his associates began using h