Original subtitles

[intriguing music]

♪ ♪♪

- I was a nursing student and going to Cal State LA,

and, you know, hanging out and doing

what most 20, 21-year-olds do.

And I was dragged to this club, and there was Lev Parnas.

Gold chain and his Cartier glasses

and his Christian Audigier gold-foiled hoodie.

He said he was in LA to produce a movie.

The evening went by. We were talking.

We were relating.

Me and Lev are both immigrants from Ukraine.

Similar background, similar upbringing.

The foundation, it's still the Soviet Union.

The next day, he shows up in

a stretch limo in front of my house to pick me up for lunch.

It's just a certain way that they produce people

out of Russia and Ukraine

that's different than anywhere else.

He proposed four days later,

and we were married within six months.

All of our friends and family thought

we were completely off our rockers.

It was like, nobody matters.

Nothing you say can stop us. Like, that's it.

It's like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Bonnie and Clyde.

Like, let's do this.

We're going to conquer the world.

I don't think you could have convinced me with anything

that this is where we would be in 2024.

- Lev Parnas. - Lev Parnas.

- Lev Parnas. - Lev Parnas.

- Lev Parnas. - Parnas.

- The shady and indicted Ukrainian businessman

Lev Parnas.

- That he would be involved in one of the biggest scandals.

- President Trump pressured the head of Ukraine

to pursue an investigation into Joe Biden.

- My call was perfect.

- Having to do with our birth country,

Ukraine, having to deal with presidents of Ukraine

and of the United States.

- Parnas is a recently indicted goon

who worked with Giuliani to help Trump blackmail Ukraine

into investigating Joe Biden.

- The impeachment of President Donald Trump is here.

- Lev Parnas, he is now talking

and he has documents to back up his words.

Parnas implicated several top Trump administration officials

including the president himself.

- Were you relying on Lev Parnas

to get rid of your ambassador? - No.

- I mean, who does that? - What happened?

- What happened? Lev happened.

- Democrats are really scraping the bottom of the barrel

if they think that Lev Parnas is their star witness.

- Lev Parnas, he is a creepy, sleazy,

self-serving super snitch.

He will do and say anything he can.

- Think I'm crazy, but I really thought

I'm going to get the Medal of Honor.

Boy, was I wrong.

[laughs]

[whimsical music]

♪ ♪♪

So I was born in Odessa, Ukraine, February 6, 1972.

My father used to own underground factories.

During Communism, you weren't allowed

to have your own business.

People that were caught running these types

of factories would get the death sentence.

We emigrate to the United States in 1976

when I was four years old.

We had friends and family that were all

immigrating to a little town right by Coney Island.

It was Brighton Beach, and we called it Little Odessa.

[upbeat music]

It was kind of like one big family.

We all came from the same persecution.

And we all wanted the same thing,

which was the American dream.

Certain individuals started leading

and taking control of the neighborhood.

People like my father that were businessmen

in the Soviet Union,

what you now call Russian organized crime.

When my father passed away, and I was 11 years old,

I had to get more involved into that world.

While other kids were going to school,

I was on the streets hustling, and the girl I was dating,

her uncle happened to be one of the leaders

in that organized crime group.

And I ended up working for him as a runner collecting money.

So one day I'm in South New Jersey, and I'm collecting.

I had somewhere around $2 and 1/2, $3 million

in cash and checks sitting in the back

of my Lincoln Town Car.

And an 18-wheeler hits me and drives over the back of my car.

[chuckles] So I remember calling my uncle

and telling him I'm stuck and the cops are on their way.

What do I do?

They're like, whatever you do, don't open the trunk.

We're on our way.

At the end of the night, it was a bunch of fun

and laughs at Atlantic City Casino

discussing how I almost got arrested

with $2 and 1/2 million in cash.

Then around 1989,

there was a big boom in the Russian community--

the Cold War might be over

and there might be a lot of opportunity.

So now fast forward... [tape whirs]

I made some really good money

over the next several years in Russia.

Import, export.

I probably had every most powerful

Russian, Ukrainian, ex-Soviet Union businessman,

mobster there to do business.

At some point, it became too crazy.

People were dying left and right

and I saw it was my time to exit.

One day, I decided to give my cousin Oleg a call.

Come on by, let's grab some sushi.

I wanted to impress him.

So here Oleg is, pulling up in this red Ferrari.

Gets out in a pinstripe suit,

looking like, you know, a million bucks.

And I look at him, I said, who did you kill?

He goes, no, it's called Wall Street.

If anybody's seen the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street,"

that didn't do it justice.

My first day in the office,

I see guys doing lines on the table.

You got guys smoking weed in the corner.

It's just a bunch of young guys running around

with headphones and screaming crazy numbers.

That was my initiation into Wall Street.

- These were largely boiler rooms.

They were low-level brokerage houses, not very well known.

And Lev was on the hustle.

Three of the brokerage houses that he worked for

had been expelled for violations of fraud.

- All of a sudden, everybody started getting arrested,

and the news started coming up with the mob on Wall Street.

My friends were going to prison,

and I decided, you know, it's time to exit.

My cousin Oleg was opening another office

in Boca Raton, Florida,

and he was looking for people to work there.

Boca Raton, Florida, here we come.

[upbeat music]

The palm trees, the oceans, the warm sunny weather--

it was a paradise.

But there was also an opportunity

for every fraudster in the world

because you had a lot of retirees.

I ended up working for the same mobbed-up

penny stock mobsters

doing the same shit we were doing in New York.

[laughs]

- In Boca Raton, he had multiple cases of

non-payment of debts

and being evicted from various places where he lived.

He had been the target of at least nine court cases.

- 2008, the Great Recession hits,

and my life goes upside down.

I lose my wife, I lose my cars, I lose my business.

I kind of started looking for a new path in life.

I got approached by one of my friends that said,

would you be willing to open up some

poker rooms in Beverly Hills?

The next thing you know, here I am,

running illegal poker games on top of Rodeo Drive.

Our clientele was the who's who.

If you ever seen "Molly's Game"--

- The movie stars, directors, and business titans--

they were going all in all the time.

- Thank you, Molly. - This is for you.

- That's it. And that was us.

At the same time, I was introduced

to this Hollywood producer, Rudy Durand.

He discovered Brooke Shields.

He was Jack Nicholson's good friend.

And he had this script that he was dying to do.

The main characters were supposed to be

Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg.

Now here I am, running at night poker games

and during the day running around with some of the most

powerful people in Hollywood, trying to put together

a movie called "Memory of an Assassin."

I had no idea about the movie business,

but I was a salesman.

And I ended up going out there and finding investors.

- He's always been someone that is

doing a lot at the same time.

- Serial entrepreneur.

- Yeah. For sure.

Serial father, too. [laughs]

- Lev is a super likable guy.

- You know what I mean?

He makes a joke, and I'm like, ah.

[laughs]

Oh, Lev. You're so crazy.

[laughs]

- Lev is kind of a lovable character.

He is charismatic.

He's full of energy, full of piss and vinegar.

- You can't forget Lev.

I've never met anyone that has not recalled meeting Lev.

- While living the life of Adam,

I met a very special person.

Little did I know that this person would end up

being the love of my life.

[coughs] Excuse me. I'm a little bit hoarse.

Four days later, I dropped to one knee

at 4 o'clock in the morning,

and I proposed to her with a jar of pickles.

And she said yes.

I was going to be wife number 3, but baby mama number 4.

It was like, OK, enough. You have kids.

All of the kids are in Florida.

So for me, it was immediately, I have to move.

I became an instant mom.

I was a young woman.

But then once you have three kids,

instantly, you get really old really quickly.

- The movie deal fell apart back then in 2010.

It would eventually be made later on without me,

with Liam Neeson, called "Memory."

- We all have to die. - That's important.

That's what you do before you go.

- I got retained December of 2017

to go after a character named Lev Parnas about a judgment.

- Tony Andre. [laughs]

Tony Andre is a Miami lawyer.

A great guy.

But he was the root of all my problems.

He was retained by a gentleman called Michael Pues.

Pues was an investor in the movie deal

that I was doing with Rudy Durand.

- Mr. Pues lent money from the trust

that took care of his elderly mother.

Seven years later, he's still out his 350 grand,

which is now $500,000, if you count post-judgment interest.

- He was like a real pit bull.

Once he got subpoena power through the judgment,

my life turned into a living hell.

- On paper, Lev looked like a terrible collection,

all the earmarks of a bum case.

I think to call him a typical Miami hustler

would do the game a disservice.

[laughter]

♪ ♪♪

- Now to the race for the White House.

And after decades of very publicly flirting

with the idea, billionaire Donald Trump

says he really is running for president this time around.

- Watching him come out, going down those golden escalator.

- They're bringing drugs.

They're bringing crime.

They're rapists.

- I mean, I've never voted.

Had nothing to do with politics.

I was never registered.

But he wasn't a politician.

He was a New York hustler. And we could relate.

♪ ♪♪

I'm working with a big real estate company.

We're out in a restaurant.

Robert Pereira, I met for the first time that evening,

he was a very, very wealthy businessman

and also a powerful person in the Republican Party.

And they had ties close to Trump.

At first, I was extremely excited

to meet this guy because of my real estate project.

So that night, we come up with this crazy idea,

is we're going to hold a huge fundraiser

at Robert's house.

This is the La Palas.

I mean, it's $140 million house

with golden chandeliers, golden doors.

So while Robert is basically figuring out

how we're going to raise this money for Donald Trump,

I'm more excited about how I'm going to have

20 Robert Pereiras in the same room,

where I could pitch my real estate deal to.

Until all of a sudden, it's breaking news.

- Trump tape bombshell--

Donald Trump caught on a hot mic

months after marrying Melania,

making vulgar comments about groping women, saying,

when you're a star, they let you do it.

- It's a shit show.

People are canceling left or right.

We were able to salvage it.

And that was my very first donation,

$50,000 to the Donald Trump campaign.

But something happened that night.

- We were like two seats away from Trump,

and Lev piped in and said something.

And instantly, it was like, no one else was in the room.

And the two of them were just talking.

- The moment that really got me is when I asked him, I said,

why are you doing this?

And he looked out into the ocean,

and then stared back at us and said, you know what?

I don't need to be doing this.

I'm doing this for the regular folk, for the common people.

I'm trying to stop them from destroying our country.

And at that moment, it was something that hit me.

At that moment, I was mesmerized,

cult-anized, hypnotized-- I was Trumponized.

- For the month leading up to the 2016 election,

we were a Trump family.

It was a whirlwind.

We were flying around all over the place

following Donald Trump.

It was a small group.

- A tough time for any Republican right now

to be standing up alongside their party's standard bearer.

- Nobody believed he could win.

Even we didn't believe he could win.

There was rallies and dinners,

and then finally, the debate in Vegas.

- Putin, from everything I see, has no respect for this person.

- Well, that's because he'd rather

have a puppet as president of the United States.

- No puppet. No puppet.

- And it's pretty clear-- - You're the puppet.

- After that, Trump said, I want you guys with me

on Election Night at the Hilton in New York.

[energetic music]

- It was such a roller coaster of a night.

All, like, sitting there nervous,

trying to pray our way to having Trump win.

- For Hillary Clinton, one of the most stunning defeats

in American political history.

- Donald Trump will be

the 45th president of the United States.

- It was like, our guy made it.

Finally, we're going to get back on track.

Back to that, you know, make America great again.

- And the crazy part, I didn't vote, but we still won.

[laughs]

- I love this country.

- Shortly after that, we found out that

we were invited to the inauguration.

It didn't take long for word to spread.

Lev was just like the Trump guy.

- During this wild ride,

I started documenting, taking pictures of everything

and posting them on social media.

All of a sudden, I started getting phone calls

from everybody I knew or didn't know

in the Russian-Ukrainian community

wanting to be my friend.

Everybody wanted to go to the inauguration.

- They do a great job for the people in this country, so--

- Whoo. - Whoo.

- It's hilarious to see all these characters

from my previous life--

Mafia kingpins, oligarchs-- hugging, sitting VIP,

and interacting with all of these Republican congressmen

and senators.

- It was very interesting for me always,

not only watching the way Lev was interacting,

but the way everyone kind of accepted Lev.

You wouldn't really come up to Trump and say, hey, my brother.

How you doing? Lev did.

- In a year and a half, I went from not knowing

anything about what politics is to now being in

the inner circle of the president.

♪ ♪♪

- Lev was just in a state of shock

that he was at this level.

This is a guy who is an immigrant

and who is living large.

Larger than he ever dreamed.

- I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear.

[trumpets playing]

♪ ♪♪

- There are also plenty of congratulations

being extended to the President-elect,

including those of Vladimir Putin.

- [speaking Russian]

- Putin said today, he's ready to open

a new chapter with the US.

- I would have a very, very good relationship

with Putin and with Russia.

- Washington Post is reporting that President Trump revealed

highly-classified information

to the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador

during a meeting in the Oval Office last week.

- The White House blindsided tonight

as the Department of Justice reveals that they will appoint

a special counsel to now oversee

the FBI investigation into Russian meddling

and any possible collusion.

- And then they launched the Robert Mueller investigation.

- The man now leading the investigation,

former FBI director Robert Mueller.

- They're weaponizing the DOJ to go after Donald Trump

because they can't stand that he won.

- US officials believe Russia not only tried to influence

the election, but also worked to help

Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.

- Over a month before the election,

US intelligence agencies accused the Russian government

of hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee

and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

- My people, they said, they think it's Russia.

President Putin, he just said it's not Russia.

I don't see any reason why it would be.

- President Trump and those working with him

had scores of contacts with Russians and WikiLeaks,

including attempts at setting up back channels

with the Kremlin.

- I have nothing to do with Russia, folks, OK?

- The Russia cloud over the Trump White House

seems to be darkening.

- Paul Manafort and a deputy campaign official, Rick Gates,

will turn themselves in to face charges.

- 12 counts, conspiracy against the United States,

unregistered agent of a foreign principal.

- Paul Manafort was working for free

as Trump's campaign manager.

But in reality, he used to get paid

by Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.

- Paul Manafort, he was doing work in Ukraine

that was very definitely pro-Russian.

- The entire thing has been a witch hunt.

- This investigation is nothing more than a witch hunt.

Five defendants have pleaded guilty.

- It's only a witch hunt if you don't find any witches.

- There's a great effort on the part

of the Trump administration to turn the tide.

- On collusion, they have nothing.

They have nothing.

It's somebody's version of the truth, not the truth.

Truth isn't truth.

- Giuliani takes this narrative and turns it into Ukraine.

- It wasn't Trump and the Russians that

meddled in the 2016 election.

It was actually Hillary and the Ukrainians.

- It's Ukrainian collusion, which was large, significant,

and proven, with Hillary Clinton,

with the Democratic National Committee.

- The real collusion scandal,

as we've said several times before,

has everything to do with the Clinton campaign.

- So that's where I think the Mueller team should

be investigating, which is the real crime,

which is the Clinton collusion.

- All of a sudden, my old friend,

somebody that I haven't seen for a while, Igor Fruman,

comes back into my life.

Igor Fruman was a Ukrainian-American citizen

that had lots of businesses overseas, primarily in Ukraine.

He had restaurants, he had nightclubs.

One of them was called the Mafia Rave Club.

[laughs]

[electronic music]

In Ukraine, Igor knew everybody,

from the low-level street hustlers

to the high-level mobsters and politicians.

They all came to his clubs.

- He made their dreams come true.

I didn't think he was the right person for Lev

to be as close as they became.

But, you know, they were. They were friends.

- Igor was a little bit more mysterious than Lev,

known particularly for connections

in organized crime.

And he came to America with a significant amount of money.

- Igor didn't fit into Trump world

until he started paying for their bills.

Igor became everybody's best friend with that

American Express Black Card.

So when Igor comes back in my life,

at first I didn't understand.

But then I realized that Igor has

been looking through my social media, like everybody else.

And that's when he made his proposal.

There was a company in Ukraine, an energy company

that was up for sale, but they wanted to be

bought out by an American company.

All of the people that really controlled oil and gas industry

were Republican mega-donors.

So we started a company called Global Energy Producers.

- They had not spent a lot of time in that energy sector,

so I don't think they knew a lot about it.

But look, they were salesmen.

- Between the connections he had

in Ukraine and the Republican Party,

it's silly not to put these two together.

- Instead of going, getting fancy offices

and investing money into advertising,

we were going to become mega-donors.

To be able to have VIP access to everything

that goes on in the Republican Party.

- He was donating money left and right.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

- We were donating to everybody who would take our money.

We donated $100,000 to Kevin McCarthy

and Vice President Mike Pence for Protect the House.

We donated thousands of dollars to Pete Sessions.

We donated to Rick Scott's senator campaign.

We've donated $50,000 to the Ron DeSantis'

campaign for Florida Governor.

I'm the one that got him the governorship.

[laughs]

I was the matchmaker between Governor DeSantis and Trump.

I mean, it was like "Fiddler On The Roof."

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.

[laughs]

The night he won,

the first person he gave a hug to was me.

And then we made our commitment for a million dollars

to the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action PAC.

And we wired $325,000 for a first installment.

It was Igor's money.

- And the money's going to various shell companies

that they formed, LLCs.

It's going to other business partners.

And then it's coming back to them again.

This was a real exercise in following the money.

♪ ♪♪

[register dings]

- So we're invited to our first intimate dinner

with Donald Trump to the America First Super PAC.

And it was being held at the Trump International Hotel.

I was sitting face-to-face with Donald Trump.

[applause]

[classical music]

When Trump saw us, he greeted us

like he always greeted us by saying, my guys,

to me and Igor.

Igor secretly recorded the whole thing.

And all of a sudden, the topic changes to Ukraine.

Me being me, I got into the conversation.

[laughter]

I realize that Trump has no idea about Ukraine.

He has no idea they have oil.

- Yes. - Yes.

- So prior to us coming to the event,

I heard all these stories about what was going on

with the Ukrainian ambassador and how she was, you know,

a Soros plant and how she was part of the Clinton regime.

The first thing that came out of my mouth is I said--

- I'm repeating gossip. I have no idea.

I have no facts, no vetting.

He got angry all of a sudden,

turned around to one of his aides and said--

- It was silence. The table looked at each other.

Nobody knew what to do.

- So we all started clapping.

[applause]

- Lev shared a piece of silly gossip,

probably from somebody that was corrupt.

And because of that, she should be immediately fired.

Just like, why?

It's punitive. It was terrible.

It was Trump.

- I get some voicemail, you know,

from a reporter saying, Lev Parnas,

through this entity named Global Energy Producers,

there was this, you know, LLC that was started in April,

and in May, they gave 325,000 to America's First Action.

And I was like, that doesn't make any sense.

This guy doesn't have two nickels to rub together.

You know, he's in the room with Trump.

- Tony Andre comes in as a civil lawyer,

but through the subpoena power,

is able to get a lot of the transfers

and how the money bounced around

to the various banks, which gets Lev in big trouble later.

- It was like a freight train going off the tracks,

and I could see that it's going off the tracks.

And I was trying to explain to him, he's going off the tracks.

But he was like, if I go off the tracks,

then I go off the tracks, whatever.

You know, eff it.

♪ ♪♪

- My world changed.

I started associating myself and hanging out with

hardcore right-wing MAGA Republicans.

Trump International Hotel, it was like home away from home.

[mysterious music]

Everybody knew my name.

Everybody knew my association with the Trump family.

And it was kind of like

feeling like I was at my own hotel.

The managers, the hotel employees,

everybody knew to report back to Donald Trump.

He knew who the high rollers were.

If you wanted any favor from Donald Trump,

you'd better stay at his hotel.

- At least $7.8 million

he received from 20 foreign governments.

It's about Trump Tower and Trump hotels.

Almost entirely, that's where this money went.

- Waking up at the Trump Hotel would

be like waking up in the war zone

with congressmen, senators, conspiracy theories,

Fox TV all over the place.

You're basically hotboxing right-wing Fox News

Russian propaganda all day long.

Everybody believed in the same bullshit.

Everybody wanted to please Donald Trump.

But what nobody could understand at the time

was how close Rudy Giuliani really was with Donald Trump.

Their relationship goes way back.

- You know, you're really beautiful.

- Oh. You dirty boy. Oh. Oh.

Donald, I thought you were a gentleman.

- Can't say I didn't try.

- When I met Giuliani, he was going through a divorce.

He was having financial difficulties.

- I can certainly tell you, the person that you see now

is not the man that I married.

- Giuliani's last hurrah was when he ran for president

during that debate when Joe Biden

basically embarrassed Rudy in front of the world by saying--

- There's only three things he mentioned in a sentence--

a noun and a verb and 9/11.

I mean, there's nothing else.

- Rudy could never forget that.

Yes, he was still Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor,

but he wasn't in the limelight.

And that's what he really missed.

Rudy was hustling, being the unofficial lobbyist,

the unofficial ambassador.

People started giving him jets and private airplanes

and paying for dinners.

People starting finding out that

he was the key to Trump's ear.

Rudy was basically working with anybody that was

willing to give him a dollar.

That's where I came in.

We sat down to discuss Rudy being my partner in my company

called Fraud Guarantee,

pleading for him to do for us what he did to LifeLock.

- Identity thieves steal from everyone.

You have to protect yourself.

I protect myself with LifeLock.

- I take full credit. It was me.

- Who better to start a company like that than Lev Parnas?

- Looking back, you could see where the irony is that now,

you know, especially I get convicted

of fraud for Fraud Guarantee.

So yeah.

- Fraud Guarantee becomes a guaranteed fraud.

- Rudy was supposed to use his contacts to promote

the company, and instead, he took half a million dollars

and accomplished nothing.

But in the beginning, I really looked up to him,

and I really cared for Rudy Giuliani.

- I'm here with my friends Lev and Igor.

- It was like a bromance made in heaven.

[whimsical music]

- At some point, almost overnight,

Rudy became Lev's--

I don't know, work wife or something

because they spent so much time together.

And they had such an intimate relationship.

They were almost like father and son.

- Four to five days out of the week,

four or five, six times a day with

phone calls and text messages.

And he was the godfather to my son, Nathan.

- There's a picture of him wiping his mouth.

I don't think Lev has ever offered me that service.

Maybe not even all of our kids.

After that, I was like, yeah.

We're not getting him back, people, like...

- This is an ABC News Special Report.

The death of President George Herbert Walker Bush.

[choir singing]

- It was the hottest ticket in Washington.

Dignitaries, billionaires from all over the world

were trying to get a ticket.

Rudy says, you guys want to go with me?

I was like, hell, yeah, we're going to go.

♪ ♪♪

But Rudy wasn't just taking me and Igor.

Rudy was also taking a date.

But not only the date, but her mother also.

[laughs]

At the time, Rudy was drinking non-stop.

Right after, he'd be going right on TV

and representing the President of the United States.

- If I did 1/10 of what Hillary Clinton did, I'd be in jail.

She paid people to create violence at his rallies.

She sold 20% of our uranium to Russia.

Poor little Hillary, we got to be nice to her.

- There's something off about Rudy Giuliani.

- How many of the former president's terrible ideas

came from an inebriated Rudy Giuliani?

- But the funniest part is having

to hear the conversations through the speakerphone

of Trump ripping Rudy after going on TV drunk.

- I think--

- Rudy always wanted to be Secretary of State,

but Trump didn't give him the opportunity because he thought

he was low energy, because he fell asleep in a meeting,

and then on the plane ride.

So at a certain point in time, you had the official

Secretary of State who was Secretary Pompeo,

and then you had the shadow Secretary of State,

who was Rudy Giuliani.

- This wasn't a normal presidency.

It was turning American foreign policy basically

into an episode of "The Apprentice."

- You're fired.

- The Mueller investigation, it's winding down Giuliani,

it's no longer looking back at the 2016 campaign.

Joe Biden, former vice president

for eight years now emerging as

the number one potential candidate now

to run against Trump.

- You are the Democrats' top choice to run against

President Trump in 2020. - This is so early.

- President Trump says that you're his dream candidate.

Would be his dream to run against you.

- He was the point man

for the Obama administration in Ukraine.

His son, Hunter, takes a job with Burisma,

a large energy company in Ukraine.

- Trump's biggest nightmare was Joe Biden,

and he did not want him to run and be his opponent.

- Let's go after Joe.

Let's go after Hunter.

And let's find that way through Ukraine.

- Rudy was amazed to see how Igor and I were

aware about these intricacies that were going on in Ukraine

between all of these corrupt politicians

and oligarchs and criminals.

So Rudy says he has an idea.

You guys are going to go Ukraine.

And when we said yes, he called Trump up.

The plan was hatched.

We were to go on our first reconnaissance mission

on behalf of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.

- It was almost like Lev and Igor landed in Trump's lap.

They were Ukrainian, they were citizens,

they were businessmen, and they were willing to do it

on Trump's and Giuliani's terms.

120%.

- Rudy says that this has to be all secretive.

This is very confidential.

The two look at Igor, said, you have a $20 bill?

Rudy took it and said, I'm officially your lawyer now.

Rudy's tool of choice was the lawyer-client privilege.

That would enable him, Trump, and ourselves to communicate.

- They get people that can work in the shadows.

Not a Henry Kissinger,

not a Phil Habib, not any of those folks.

Lev and Igor, no guardrails.

No oversight. Nothing.

- And that is how I was recruited

to start this secret mission to dig up dirt

on Joe and Hunter Biden.

- This is where really the backchannel campaign begins.

And could that get them in trouble

with various laws in place that warned against that?

Of course.

But they didn't worry about that.

They had protection. They had the president.

They had Rudy Giuliani.

- For the life of me, I can't understand

why they got recruited to do anything

sensitive with Rudy Giuliani.

It makes no sense to me,

unless maybe you're looking for a fall guy.

- I don't think Hillary Clinton or any other sane person

would be entrusting Lev and Igor with top secret

government kind of information,

and then having them run around Ukraine.

He's not qualified. I mean, it's just ridiculous.

- With Trump, it was never about competency.

It was never about the Constitution.

It was always about loyalty.

It was always about protecting him.

It was always about doing things for him.

- Like "Fear and Loathing" in Washington, DC--

- As your attorney, I advise you to rent

a very fast car with no top.

- There's this the president talking to this crazy cat,

his lawyer, who's got these two people that should not even be

in the room that are now participating

in a really high level.

But comedic as it was, it was also gravely serious.

- Wait. We can't stop here.

This is bat country.

- This was the beginning of the BLT team.

We would meet at BLT Steakhouse Restaurant

at the Trump International Hotel.

They had a private room there that I was told by Don Jr.

it was swept once a week to make sure that there was

no listening devices there.

The BLT team was compiled of Rudy Giuliani,

who was the head, and it was me and Igor.

And then you had John Solomon,

who was The Hill reporter at the time.

Then you had Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing,

who were two right-wing lawyers

that used to work for Trump.

They were a key part in getting Bill Barr

to become attorney general.

Victoria told them, don't worry about it.

Bill Barr is going to wipe away the Mueller report.

And that was it.

- Bill Barr, one of the most respected jurists

in the country, highly respected lawyer,

a terrific man, a terrific person,

he will be nominated for

the United States Attorney General.

- So the BLT team had this big round table with windows.

People could see in, the way you were sitting down.

And Rudy was like Don Corleone.

- Rudolph Giuliani, the US attorney

for the Southern District of New York.

- New York City is affected by organized crime,

moreso probably than any other city in the United States.

- I'd be right by his side as his soldier.

- He's part of a criminal family.

You know, he's the Tom Hagen. - [laughs]

- I have a special practice. I handle one client.

- He is fascinated by the mob,

and constantly talking about "The Godfather."

- Sounds like a poor imitation of "The Godfather."

Almost like, you know, "The Godfather."

This is business.

- You could see his love for that mob lifestyle.

Everybody knew that I was so close to the president

than Rudy Giuliani, that I was a gatekeeper.

To be able to walk into a room and have

all of these powerful people-- congressmen, senators--

bow down, run up to you, kiss your ass.

It was amazing. The power, the rush.

December 2018, we were invited to

the White House Hanukkah Party.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

- Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam.

- Trump comes straight up to me, shakes my hand,

looks me in the eye and says, Rudy tells me great things.

Thank you for what you do.

And then his-- keep up the good work.

[laughs]

The President of the United States

is sending me on a mission to be able to save our democracy.

A week later, we were in Ukraine.

- I knew he was out of his league

right from the beginning.

I told him, listen, you entered a Good Ol' Boys Club.

You don't belong there.

You do not have membership to this club at all.

You think you might, but all you have is access.

And access is going to get denied

the second they are done with you.

- When he started traveling to Ukraine

and being on this mission,

I knew almost everything he was doing was a bad idea.

- I'd get home and tell her,

you can't believe what just happened.

You can't believe who I was with.

- She'd be like, what are you doing?

- Every chance I had to tell him that he's out of his mind

and instead of a medal, he's going to get handcuffs

because he's going to be the fall guy.

This was a mission impossible.

A mission stupid.

I don't know which one, but maybe both.

- I'll see you in Ukraine soon. - Yeah.

- We're in Ukraine.

There was a convoy of cars with a bunch of people in there

with guns.

We were driven first to one house, where we switched cars.

I mean, this is right out of a spy thriller.

It was in the middle of nowhere, like a log cabin.

There was a Viktor Shokin.

He was an elderly gentleman.

But this guy is not your typical grandfather.

This guy is hardcore.

- Viktor Shokin was a very disreputable former prosecutor.

There are various allegations of corruption.

For this country to get the kind of help and aid

that it needed, various funding agencies wanted them out.

Then Vice President Biden went over there

to get rid of this guy.

- As I'm leaving in six hours, if the prosecutor's not fired,

you're not getting the money.

- That happened.

Shokin was let go.

- Well, son of a bitch. [laughter]

Got fired.

- Ukraine's embattled prosecutor,

General Viktor Shokin, is no longer in office.

Viktor Shokin's departure comes after

the country's president, Poroshenko,

publicly urged the general prosecutor to resign.

- By the time Lev Parnas gets to Shokin, he has a vendetta.

- Shokin told us Joe Biden was involved in the firing

to protect his son Hunter Biden,

who was a board member of Burisma,

a corrupt Ukrainian energy company.

It's a huge bombshell.

It would cost Biden the nomination.

We fly down to New York.

We meet up with Rudy in Park Avenue.

He was very excited because Victor Shokin

is willing to play ball.

So Viktor Shokin now needs to get a visa.

He then goes to the US embassy,

then he gets rejected.

Rudy looks at me and says, don't worry about that.

I'll take care of that.

He calls me on later that evening,

says he just met with Pompeo.

Everything is good.

Shokin goes back, and they take away his passport.

[laughs]

- And Shokin is obviously irate,

screaming to the media and everything that

the US ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, blocked his visa.

I said, Rudy, it's Marie Yovanovitch again.

She's back at it.

Rudy loses it.

She's going to get involved in my investigation.

I'll show her.

He texts me, I'm calling number 1.

That was Donald Trump.

Calls me back and tells me in two days,

everything's going to be all right.

It's Shokin gets called into the embassy,

where he gets a strict letter saying that he is put on

a do-not-fly list now.

So the more pressure we were putting on

to give him the visa, the more they were

destroying Shokin over there.

And he was flipping losing it. [laughs]

The president of the United States

can't even get a visa for somebody.

It was like The Bad News Bears of politics.

- One thing about Marie Yovanovitch,

she's not going to do the back room, you know, diplomacy.

She was a very disciplined and respected civil servant.

They needed to get her out.

- And we can't get a visa for Shokin.

So we arranged a Skype call. It was Rudy, myself, and Igor.

We're joined by an ex-FBI agent that

Rudy had there to take notes.

And on the other side was Viktor Shokin.

- How long had he been conducting that investigation

that involved Biden's son?

- And Rudy said was there anything illegal

that Hunter Biden or Joe Biden did?

- Do they get a kickback? Do they get a bribe?

- And there's a two-second pause and then you hear--

- No. He was basically saying--

- No. But if I would be able to investigate it,

I'm convinced that we would have found something there.

- Shokin had previously investigated Burisma.

There was no credible evidence at that time to charge

Burisma or Hunter Biden.

So for Shokin to then bring it up again

just seemed ludicrous.

[gritty music]

- Tonight, we have more evidence

of Ukraine gas company Burisma leveraging Hunter Biden

for political access and more lies from Joe Biden,

as he tries to cover up this story.

- The bullshit pipeline worked like this.

Between 5:00 and 7:00 in the evenings, Rudy would text you.

Do we have anything for the president or John Solomon?

And get some information from Ukraine.

I'd send it over to John Solomon,

and literally, within an hour or two,

it'd be all over Fox News.

- Joe, remember, you heard it here first.

Credible evidence about your son

peddling your influence as vice president

in exchange for millions in one case

and billions in another case.

- If some Ukrainian called me up with some crazy theory like

the sky is yellow, Solomon would turn around and say,

yep, my sources confirmed the sky is yellow,

and it'd be on Hannity.

- I can confirm to you tonight that the US government

had open source intelligence and was aware

as early as February of 2019 that the Ukrainian government

was planning to reopen the Burisma investigation.

- Part of my job was to make sure

that the information we were getting

was coming from credible sources.

People that were in power in office and had authority.

But there was lots of other characters

like oligarchs, street guys,

businessmen that were all trying to get into the mix.

Most of those were actually GRU and Russian agents.

They were just babbling all this Russian disinformation.

Nobody would listen to it until Rudy Giuliani.

I mean, Rudy did not care, as long as it fit his narrative.

And the narrative was Joe Biden is bad.

- Having his son, who had just been tossed out of the military

for drug problems, put on the board

of the most corrupt company in Ukraine.

- They needed to help feed the beast.

Get it out there on The Hill,

get it out there on Fox News.

- Well, Joe Biden has spent weeks

deflecting the flood of questions

about his son's shady business deals in Ukraine and China.

- And then all of a sudden,

Hunter Biden resigns from the board.

Lev and Igor, they got a victory.

They're riding high.

[whimsical music]

- That was good. But we needed more.

We didn't have the smoking gun.

Two days later, here comes a call,

and it's current General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko.

Come on down. You're the next contestant.

[laughs]

- Yuriy Lutsenko didn't have a great reputation.

Like a lot of prosecutors,

these are largely political hacks.

They feed a certain faction that's in power.

- He came in with a pile of paperwork

that had to do with Burisma,

but he's not showing any hardcore facts.

- He never left any records nor was very specific as to,

OK, where did the money come in?

How was it delivered?

How did Vice President Biden benefit?

- Giuliani said, we need you to announce an investigation

into the Bidens.

Lutsenko was willing to get this investigation announced,

but he needed something in return.

Yovanovitch had to go, and that wasn't a problem

because Rudy wanted Yovanovitch gone.

The problem is, Trump already fired her.

Remember, when we had our dinner,

he said get rid of her, and she's still there.

But he couldn't understand it.

He would just scream, she's fired and expect that's it.

She's gone.

Trump told Pompeo to fire her.

Pompeo refused.

He even screamed so loud at his secretary, Madeline,

to fire her and she told him, Mr. President,

I don't have the authority to do it.

A man that's known for firing people on TV,

and here, he can't fire his own ambassador.

I mean, it was hilarious.

- I don't know if I'm more offended as a Ukrainian

or as an American to see the extents

and lengths that President Trump was willing to go.

It didn't make sense to me.

And I think the only person it made sense to was Trump.

It was just astonishing to see

such high levels of government acting like children.

[intriguing music]

- One of the things that I was fascinated to find

was that when global energy producers

did get bank accounts, I see charges of Lev's in Ukraine.

You know, he's living it up in Kyiv.

- While Lev is being chased by creditors all through

South Florida, he is now orchestrating

a stream of money with Igor

that goes through a foreign bank to the US.

The money is flowing.

And he is spending it with Igor with reckless abandon.

They flew first class, they stayed at top-level hotels,

they ate $1,000 dinners.

We're talking $600 at Tootsies,

a strip club in Kyiv.

They were not only moving around Ukraine,

they were jet setting around the globe--

Paris, Warsaw, London.

They were globe-trotting diplomats, if you will.

And I use that term loosely.

♪ ♪♪

- Here I am, a kid out of Brooklyn

going to meet the president of Ukraine,

the country that I was born in,

relaying a message

from the most powerful man in the world.

It's time. Game time.

- I was scared every time he went to Ukraine

that he wouldn't come back.

- Petro Poroshenko battling to hold on to his presidency

against Zelenskyy.

- Elections were going on in Ukraine.

I told Poroshenko that he would give Lutsenko

the go ahead to open the investigation into the Bidens,

and Poroshenko himself would come out and discuss

the involvement and the meddling

of US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch

into Ukrainian politics.

In return, Donald Trump would then not only have Poroshenko

visit him at the White House,

but he would also come visit him in Ukraine

and support him in his elections.

I made the very, very first quid pro quo

to the President Poroshenko of Ukraine

from President Donald Trump.

After I'm done talking, Poroshenko sits back,

starts laughing, and said, hold on a second.

He goes, we're not going to do this again.

- Thank you very much.

It's a great honor to be with President Poroshenko.

- He got screwed by Trump on some shady coal deal,

and now he can't even get a phone call back.

So at this point, he didn't trust that Trump would

hold up his end of the deal.

John Solomon, Rudy, everybody starts going crazy.

And it becomes an all-out war between

Yuriy Lutsenko and Rudy Giuliani.

Finally, after Rudy getting on the phone

and literally screaming at Lutsenko and cursing,

Lutsenko, he's going to do the interview.

And he's going to give us a bombshell

that we're not even ready for.

- This isn't a normal political exercise.

This is subterfuge on an entirely nother level.

You just don't see that. Nowhere in American history.

- You gotta understand. I mean, I was at the studios.

I was at the control room...

[laughs] Overseeing this interview.

Old Soviet style, you know, propaganda,

state TV-type of shit.

- Today, we'll launch a criminal investigation

about this fact and we'll give a legal assessment

of this information.

- Lutsenko tells The Hill, we're doing an investigation.

And boom, that was another victory for the team.

How real was the investigation?

No more real than a lot of the investigations

that happened there.

- So let's be perfectly clear.

Trump or Rudy never cared if there

was an actual investigation.

Trump, even himself said that several times

to announce it and leave the rest to me.

- How do you gauge the relationship between Ukraine

and specifically our US ambassador Yovanovitch?

- That's when Lutsenko hits us with the bomb.

- Unfortunately, from the first meeting

with the US ambassador in Kyiv,

Ms. Ambassador gave me a list of people

whom we should not prosecute.

- And all hell broke loose.

- There is no proof of that,

and the State Department flatly denied that

and said it was a fabrication.

But, you know, at the end of the day, the damage was done.

- We were on cloud nine, high fives,

and having dinner and drinks and thinking, we did it.

We got it. Mission accomplished.

- Breaking news.

In the Russia investigation, a summary of the Mueller report

has been delivered to Congress.

- Attorney General William Barr reported

that the special counsel found no evidence

that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it

conspired or coordinated with Russia to influence

the 2016 presidential election.

- This was all bullshit.

- Worries among Mueller's investigators

that Barr may have shaped the entire narrative

about the Russia investigation.

- But it was party time at the Trump International.

Music was going.

Congressmen, senators were all over the place.

Finally, this Russian collusion is going to bed.

We knew Bill Barr was going to take care of it.

- After Mueller, you would think at that point,

the administration would be breathing

a collective sigh of relief.

No.

There wasn't any effort to kind of OK,

let's play this straight.

Let's do it right.

No. They're right back in the hunt.

Now, let's target an ambassador.

- It's been a dramatic day.

President Trump fired US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

- That morning, I wake up from a phone call from Lutsenko,

and he's like, congratulations.

Finally, you guys did something right.

- Yovanovitch said she was never told why

she was removed.

- I texted Victoria Toensing and she said,

the Wicked Witch is gone.

Like, you know, from "The Wizard of Oz."

- The wicked old witch at last is dead.

[cheers and applause]

- She is the anti-corruption fighter.

And we were celebrating that we got her out.

all: ♪ Ding, dong, the witch is dead ♪

- What they were doing was

this dangerous form of diplomacy.

They had the wherewithal and the means

to get recalled an American ambassador.

They did that. And there was no turning back.

- And so as the Ukrainian presidential elections start

heating up in April, all of a sudden,

here comes Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of nowhere.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪♪

Here was a guy that was a comedian

that had no chance whatsoever.

Every day, he got bigger and bigger

until eventually he just took over and won in a landslide.

- Having played the role of president in a TV show,

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now on course

to make that role a reality.

Zelenskyy and his team can celebrate

this election victory, but defeating corruption

and ending the war with Russia is going to prove far harder.

- All of a sudden, it's a whole new cast of characters

and our mission changes.

We need to open up a back door channel

between Zelenskyy and Giuliani on behalf of Trump.

- The inauguration date

of President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskyy is being discussed.

- The inauguration is going to be big.

And it's going to be this huge event

to show a strength for Russia.

It was very important for Trump to be there.

And Trump said, I don't think I can make it,

but I will send the next best thing.

I'll send Pence. So they were all set.

Rudy realized that the inauguration was going

to be their pressure point.

And he will use it to our advantage.

- We have runaway diplomats

operating in another country under nobody's watch,

nobody's aegis, nothing.

If we lose sight of that, we have problems.

And if we lose sight of what happened,

we're in serious trouble as a country.

- Lev started to slip away.

Reminds me of the "Titanic" scene.

- Jack.

There's a boat.

Jack.

- That's pretty much where we were

during the four years of the presidency of Trump.

[dramatic music]

[record scratches]

I'd never know when he was coming or going.

He could buy a ticket in the morning,

and then cancel it by night, and then be somewhere else

by the next morning.

When he was home, he was unbearable.

It was Trump, Trump, Trump. MAGA, MAGA, MAGA.

Ukraine scandal. Joe Biden.

There was nothing else to talk to Lev about.

- It was hardcore control over my family.

- Are you kidding me?

You're going to watch MSNBC?

You don't know that that's full of lies and they hate Trump?

- That was part of the MAGA cult movement.

Once they got you in and they told you what you could watch,

who you could speak to, and what you could believe.

- Now I have to eat and pretend like

it's not a big deal that Trump

is making fun of disabled people.

- I don't know what I said. Uh, I don't remember!

- Being derogatory towards women.

- She's shocked that I picked her.

- I'm not thinking, Mr. President.

- That's OK. I know you're not thinking.

You never do. - I'm sorry?

- My husband is now

turning into the same orange person on TV.

Thank God, he didn't go spray tanning.

Eventually, that might have gotten there, you know?

I mean, eventually him and Rudy would have been

going together to get spray tanned.

- They were in this sort of like,

Republican political industrial complex.

They were in it.

He seemed like he thought he was untouchable.

My client had gotten a phone call.

Hey, you know, our guy, Lev,

has connections straight to the top.

Why are you busting our chops about this 500 grand?

It was a thinly-veiled threat.

My client is a real tough-minded guy.

He wasn't going to be deterred by any threat,

thinly veiled or otherwise.

That inspired me to be just as tenacious.

- The mission was now to schedule a meeting

between Rudy Giuliani and President-elect

Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

- Trump wanted the new president

to announce an investigation into

Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

- The announcement would legitimize the story

that we've been pushing in the media.

- He wanted Rudy to close the deal.

- We're in Ukraine, we're pounding the pavement.

We're meeting with every kind of character,

from your foreign ministers, your oligarchs, your criminal.

Anybody in there, from rabbis to popes.

My dear brother, we are here in Ukraine.

We're here with the Rabbi Moshe.

- God bless you, Mr. Giuliani.

- There wasn't a rock that we didn't overturn.

I mean, from bartenders to waitresses, we went everywhere.

It was like Groundhog Day.

We would get promises.

Everybody would tell us, yeah. Great.

Absolutely. We'll set it up.

And then two hours later, they disappear.

It started getting really creepy

because some forces out there

are stopping this from happening.

We didn't know at the time the US embassy was following

everything we were doing.

After every meeting, somebody from the embassy

would come right in afterwards and tell them,

don't meet with Rudy, this is illegitimate.

There's proper channels. This needs to stop.

It was us versus the deep state and the embassy,

and we represent Donald Trump.

Kiss our ass.

So after several people ghosting us,

I finally set up a meeting with Minister Avakov.

He said, well, I need an official letter.

I said, no problem. Gave Rudy a call.

Within a couple of minutes, there was an official letter

emailed over to me.

Avakov's eyes changed.

He understood that this was real now.

We had an agreement on May 10.

Rudy was supposed to fly in,

and there was supposed to be a meeting

between Zelenskyy and Rudy.

So it's 5 o'clock in the morning.

I hear my phone going crazy.

[phone buzzing]

It's Rudy.

I thought maybe he was drunk or something.

Pick up the phone, and he's screaming.

They're all against us. This was all a set up.

The Ukrainians were going to come out after Giuliani

and align me with Zelenskyy, and claimed that Giuliani

was trying to shake them down.

And Giuliani said, that's it. Get out of there.

We're not going back to Ukraine.

Fuck them. They're all liars.

You know, we're done.

About an hour later, my phone starts blowing up again.

Now it's the Ukrainians.

All the Ukrainian officials and oligarchs

calling me up saying, what the fuck is going on?

Rudy went on Fox and basically went on a rampage.

- I'm not going to go because I think

I'm walking into a group of people

that are enemies of the president.

- Calling out names.

- A gentleman by the name of Lutsenko.

- He even told the whole world

that Ukraine is corrupt and fuck you.

- So no trip on Sunday. No trips to Ukraine.

- No trips. - My ass is on the line.

Any one of these guys out there that I was dealing with

could have just said, he's not leaving and I'm not leaving.

It was a terrible morning.

All of US and Ukrainian relations are now on the line.

So I set up a meeting with Lutsenko.

And I started going strong and saying,

this could all be resolved.

President Zelenskyy needs to announce

a fucking investigation.

This will stop.

Lutsenko said, give me an hour.

And within an hour, I got a call from Shefir.

Serhiy Shefir was the interim Chief of Staff

to President-elect Zelenskyy.

He was his partner in his entertainment business.

So I called Rudy.

I'll never forget that conversation.

He was very loud, so I had to hold the phone over here.

And he was very-- I mean, he was like,

you make sure you tell them like,

we're not messing around.

Make him understand that if Zelenskyy does not announce

an investigation into the Bidens by Monday,

there will be no relationship.

There will be no military aid. There will be no medical aid.

And Vice President Pence will not show up

at your inauguration.

I was like, holy shit.

Pence canceling it was a message to Vladimir Putin

that we are no longer supporting Ukraine.

Like, how am I going to say this?

So I start practicing with Igor.

I see Igor is turning pale white.

He's like, you're not going to say this.

You do understand, this is the president of Ukraine.

We have to think about our safety.

We have to get out of here.

We get downstairs, there's a whole entourage

of bodyguards and cars.

Igor kept trying to explain to me, yeah, Lev,

they're protecting us.

But if tomorrow they decide not to protect us...

[laughs]

We're off to see Serhiy Shefir.

The meeting was at a restaurant called Prague.

The whole restaurant was closed.

Probably 40 or 50 bodyguards between

mine and Serhiy Shefir's.

And then there was the three of us

and a little table outside.

This was literally like a scene out of a spy movie.

I mean, James Bond has nothing on us.

- Bond.

James Bond.

- Igor sitting next to me taking shots

because he was nervous as hell.

I hit Shefir hard.

I understand this meeting might not be pleasant,

but it's very serious.

This is what needs to happen.

We've been trying to get a meeting with

President-elect Zelenskyy.

For some reason, we're having difficulty.

We need your help to be able to arrange this meeting.

Looking back at, it was just incredible

how I was explaining to him that we were trying

to root out corruption while at that moment

corrupting him to the fullest extreme.

It was a simple meeting.

There was not that much to discuss, and that was it.

That night, they ghosted me.

I remember Rudy saying, well, now they're going

to see the wrath of Trump.

Next morning, the Ukrainians got a phone call

from the United States telling him

that Mike Pence is not going to be coming to the inauguration.

Boy, was that a problem.

- Like, this is the way he's going to go out?

Running around for Trump? Is this really worth his life?

- Ukrainian officials wanted Vice President Pence

to attend the inauguration for the new president

Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

What are you learning about that trip?

It was canceled, right?

- Pence canceling was almost like a death sentence for us.

- [speaking Ukrainian]

- Oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi

owned television broadcast network

where Zelenskyy made his bones.

Zelenskyy and Kolomoyskyi were essentially friends

and supporters of one another.

- This guy is as bad as they come.

I mean, this guy has an army of 10,000 people of his own.

So this is not a regular oligarch.

- The first statement he makes on television

as he gets back is--

- Basically threatening our lives.

- I'm pretty sure I probably broke down after that.

And I was just like, what if he doesn't come back?

- Giuliani started tweeting, hitting all media,

basically telling Volodymyr Zelenskyy

that if he does not arrest Igor Kolomoyskyi immediately,

and if something happens to either me or Igor

while we're in Ukraine, that he will be to blame for it.

Now, we're getting a call from the interior minister saying,

you're out of here now.

Within moments, we were fitted with bulletproof vests,

thrown on into a convoy of cars

and whisked off into a plane.

No immigration, no passport control.

Next thing you know, we were gone.

We were out of Ukraine and off to Paris.

And that was the last time I ever was in Ukraine.

- That's when Trump has to enter the fray.

- A troubling private conversation

between President Trump and a foreign leader

has rung such an alarm bell that the intelligence

community's internal watchdog calls it an urgent concern.

- This was a July 25 call between the president

and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.

- And what's jumping off the page to me

is that the president of Ukraine says,

where are the Javelins?

Where is the defense support you're giving us?

And the very next sentence by the president is,

I would like you to do us a favor.

- During the call, Mr. Trump pressured

the Ukrainian President eight times

to investigate former Vice President

Joe Biden's son, Hunter.

- It was a very easy connect the dots

to what Lev had started to do

and what President Trump had eventually

tried to do himself.

- That the president was saying, I need this favor.

And by the way, I've got your money.

- This conversation was about a trade.

- It clearly was a quid pro quo.

- There was no quid pro quo.

No quid pro quo!

There was no quid pro quo.

- This is a very dangerous situation for our country

right now.

And it is amazing that we continue to let this man

be in charge of nuclear weapons.

- Question, sir, was, what did you want

President Zelenskyy to do about Vice President Biden

and his son Hunter?

- Are you talking to me?

- The irony is that it comes shortly after

he had just been investigated for using a foreign power

to meddle in a presidential election.

And it's happening all over again.

- That call was perfect. It couldn't have been nicer.

- Even if you don't believe the whole Russia, Russia, Russia,

that Trump colluded with the Russians--

I want to make it very clear--

that he colluded with the Ukrainians

to meddle in the 2020 election.

And I know it, because I was there.

- That's really where things started to accelerate

downward quickly.

- Mr. Trump did order a hold on military aid to Ukraine.

- President Trump ordered his acting Chief of Staff,

Mick Mulvaney, to delay that military aid to Ukraine

just days before a call with the Ukrainian President.

- We found out that Trump actually withheld military aid.

That was a very, very serious moment in my life.

The message I gave them, Trump actually acted on it.

I was horrified.

- It was like, holy cow.

Now we're in it.

We're talking about not releasing aid to Ukraine.

- Officials at the Office of Management and Budget

relayed Mr. Trump's order to withhold hundreds of millions

of dollars in military aid.

- One career diplomat sounding the alarm very directly

by noting in writing in this text,

"I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance

for help with a political campaign."

- Never in a million years

I'd think we would get to that point.

I never thought that we would not

get a meeting with Zelenskyy.

- Zelenskyy really stood up to Lev and to Rudy and to Trump,

and he just wouldn't budge.

- Ukrainians weren't as corrupt as he thought they were.

They weren't as corrupt as him or Rudy.

- I really hope that you and President Putin

get together and can solve your problem.

That would be a tremendous achievement.

- I thought Trump's a hero saving our democracy

and Zelenskyy is a corrupt leader.

And it was all the opposite.

At the end of the day, it turned out that

Trump was the actual criminal

and Zelenskyy was a stand-up guy.

- We were all waiting for Trump to get presidential.

And instead, he just became a monster.

He's a bully, and he really needs to focus on himself.

Like, please stop focusing on the United States.

Go sit down. It's time.

[whimsical music]

- The serial entrepreneur-type judgment debtors,

they're going to find themselves into something.

And Lev found himself into the biggest something

I've ever seen a debtor ever get into.

We were able to find a account that Lev controlled

through an entity called Aaron Investments I, LLC

that the $325,000 actually came from.

They gave 325,000 to America's First Action.

- The money got flagged by a bank.

They saw the hallmarks of money laundering and fraud.

That got the attention of the Feds.

- The Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint

with the FEC.

They're basically alleging a straw man donation

by Global Energy Producers.

And then we were off to the races.

That was the smoking gun we needed.

- And then a tweet came out that listed

the top five donors for Trump

and him and Igor were on that list.

People started to dig in into trying to figure out

where Lev is from, what he's doing.

At that point, I started to feel more kind of unsafe.

I felt like things were destabilizing a bit.

- This is an NBC News special report.

- Breaking this evening, House Democrats tonight

are taking the first formal step

that could potentially lead to the impeachment

of President Trump.

- The impeachment inquiry is centered on

President Trump's phone call with the leader of Ukraine.

Now, the question, did the president

pressure him to investigate political rival Joe Biden?

- They testified that President Trump froze

military aid to Ukraine in order to force

a public announcement of investigation

into his political rivals.

- Forced out.

The former American ambassador to Ukraine

tells lawmakers that President Trump

pressed to have her fired.

- Yovanovitch was recalled from her post in May

amidst charges from Rudy Giuliani

and in conservative media

that she had spoken out against the president.

- Getting rid of Ambassador Yovanovitch

helped set the stage for an irregular channel

that could pursue the two investigations that mattered

so much to the president-- the 2016 conspiracy theory,

and most important, an investigation into

the 2020 political opponent

he apparently feared most, Joe Biden.

- I get a letter from Congress basically requesting

all of the information that I have gathered

in Ukraine while I was doing work

for President Trump and Rudy.

I called Rudy right away and told him.

He said, oh. Don't worry about it.

Let me call Trump. We'll take care of this.

We're going to get you a lawyer.

And it was John Dowd.

He represented President Trump in a matter prior to that.

For John Dowd to officially represent me,

the president had to sign a letter

to waive a conflict of interest.

And I have that letter.

So I fly in directly to John Dowd's house in Cape Cod.

The first thing he does is gets all the president's lawyers,

all the president's men on the phone and says,

you know, it's game time.

On the call was Jay Sekulow, Rudy Giuliani,

Victoria Toensing, and Joe diGenova.

All the president's putzes. [laughs]

John Dowd sent a letter of response,

basically a fuck you letter.

There was a big joke about it.

Everybody couldn't believe that's the way

he responded to Congress and colleagues.

- For him to not speak to the government,

not attempt to cooperate,

one could say that Lev's first lawyers

were concerned about interests other than Lev Parnas.

- I mean, I'm a little confused at the time.

I thought they wanted me to testify on behalf of Trump,

to tell the truth of everything I uncovered about the Bidens.

It was the opposite. We're going to go dark.

Nobody on our side was scared of Congress.

There was no repercussions.

Trump and Rudy thought, and still think,

that they are above the law.

The message in Trump world was,

don't worry about accountability.

There won't be any.

You do what you need to do to protect Trump.

- All right, as we have mentioned in our monologue,

we obtain new Ukrainian documents from Rudy Giuliani.

You interviewed Shokin.

We know why he was fired.

He was told why he was fired.

He's now said it five separate times.

Said he was fired because he was

interviewing and investigating Biden's corrupt son.

- Rudy Giuliani goes on TV with this Viktor Shokin letter.

The letter basically said, for the first time ever,

that he officially got fired by Joe Biden,

because he was looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden.

Now, Hannity wants to do

an exclusive interview with Shokin.

Rudy asked me to help Fox to set up

this exclusive interview.

So the interview was arranged in Vienna.

We had the studios ready.

Shokin was there, and we were flying out there.

In the morning, we met up with Rudy at the BLT breakfast area

and went over our game plan.

- Lev and I spoke during that day just fine.

He was telling me he's just hanging out

at the Trump Hotel with Rudy waiting for his plane.

- Rudy said he got a call from President Trump,

and he needed to see him at the White House.

Rudy was going to meet us a couple of days later.

So I didn't think anything of it.

He told me, go ahead. Set everything up.

And I'll see you there Saturday.

- And then he left for the airport.

- It's boarding time.

A couple of men jumped out and said,

can we see your passports?

Me and Igor gave him our passports.

And they turned around and said, this is them.

You are under arrest. They started handcuffing us.

And one of the FBI agents says, you know,

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news,

but your house is being raided right now.

- They busted through the back door as if, I don't know,

they're coming to Osama bin Laden's house.

One lingering thought was in my head like, what did you do?

- The arrests of two associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani

on campaign finance violations.

- The two arrested at Dulles Airport after buying

a one-way ticket out of the country.

- They're associates of the president's personal lawyer,

Rudy Giuliani.

- These are the first criminal charges

emerging from the Trump administration's

controversial relationship with Ukraine.

- Government documents show that the men helped Giuliani

set up a meeting with high-level Ukrainians

who Giuliani was lobbying to investigate

Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

- One of the agents said to me,

I could try and get your wife on the phone.

And I told her I loved her. I told her not to worry.

Called Rudy.

- That was the last I spoke to him

for the next, like, 10 days.

- Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas were picked up

at Dulles on Wednesday night, just hours after

"The Wall Street Journal" reports they had lunch

with Rudy Giuliani at the Trump International Hotel.

- And I think Rudy knew and was told not to be on that plane.

- I didn't get from Rudy

that he knew this was going to happen.

But I also got from Rudy that

he wasn't very surprised that it happened.

Rudy was saying that, you know, don't worry.

Everything's going to be fine.

It's the Democrats or the deep state.

It started to feel more and more and more of everybody

kind of just disappearing into the background.

- I guess I met him one time and he came to an event

and took a picture with me.

- That was hard to go through, having people just turn away.

- I don't know Lev Parnas.

- How well do you know Parnas? - It was funny.

I didn't even realize he was Ukrainian.

I thought he was Israeli.

- When Trump came on TV--

- Were you relying on Lev Parnas

to get rid of your ambassador? - No.

- And he was like, no. I don't know him.

- Well, I don't know him.

I don't know Parnas other than, I guess,

I had pictures taken, which I do with

thousands of people, including people today

that I didn't meet.

- I don't know who he is.

- I don't know what he's about.

I don't know where he comes from.

Know nothing about him.

- He might be a fine gentleman.

- Perhaps he's a fine man.

Perhaps he's not. I know nothing about him.

- I mean, that was, like, so low.

It was just a lie.

Of course you know him.

- Trump says he doesn't know these guys,

but there he is with Igor-- [laughter]

Looking like they just won Best RV Dealership

in Gary, Indiana.

- When I told him that Trump said he doesn't know him,

he didn't believe me.

He's like, no way.

What's Rudy doing? Where is diGenova?

Where are they?

He had no idea that they weren't

all running to get him out.

- I was waiting for the cavalry.

The cavalry never came. - Lev was expendable.

He was a good front person.

He was someone you could ultimately disavow

or maybe arrest and shut up.

- The federal government took notice of our case.

Someone was absolutely looking at what we were doing,

and it was aiding them in their investigation.

Obviously, our intent was not to have Mr. Parnas

indicted and put in jail.

People who are in jail can't pay debts.

- In the middle of the night, I see a piece of paper

being slipped under my jail cell.

It's a postcard from Rudy Giuliani.

"Dear Lev and Igor, the lunch was good

"and I enjoyed sharing a table with you.

"Trump's hotel is nice, don't you think?

"I'm sorry what happened at Dulles Airport,

"and I guess we won't be meeting in Vienna after all.

"Don't worry, Paul's lawyers are good.

"He only got 8 to 10 years, so maybe things will work out.

Rudy G."

I felt extremely abandoned.

He was like a father figure. I really trusted him.

This is where the first time I--

it was the beginning of me getting out of the cold.

- I didn't want to believe that he could hurt us

after how much Lev put into that relationship.

Maybe more than our marriage at the time.

- I stopped trusting everything

they were telling me and wanted to get somebody

to represent me that I could trust.

- When I entered the case, Lev and I decided

remaining silent was not in his best interest,

that it would be far better for Lev

if he appeared to be a credible person,

willing to tell important truths

at great risk to himself.

- I basically was going to tell the world the truth.

I'm not going to hide from anybody.

[energetic music playing]

- I look forward to defending myself vigorously in court.

And I'm certain that in the time,

truth will be revealed, and I will be vindicated.

- Thank you both for agreeing to do this.

I know that this is a leap of trust

to speak publicly in this way for the first time.

- Thank you for having us here.

- You gave the message of a quid pro quo

to Ukrainian officials.

- The first quid pro quo we gave them was

when we met with President Poroshenko.

I wanted to talk to the FBI, the DOJ, the Southern District.

Well, nobody wanted to talk to me.

- Are you afraid, Mr. Mayor, that you could be indicted?

- Oh, wow.

- What's really interesting is Rudy Giuliani

has never been charged for operating

as an unregistered foreign agent.

- They helped me find people.

And as I've said, they did a good job.

- The marquee count in the first indictment

was Lev somehow exerting suasion

on the president on behalf of some Ukrainian officials

to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine.

With this superseding indictment,

the government very quietly excised

their marquee allegation and glommed into that indictment

a garden variety fraud case.

- The best thing that happened

to President Trump and Rudy Giuliani is that

Igor and Lev get charged

with campaign finance violations.

- Oh, poor Lev. I don't know what he's doing to himself.

- And you can now paint them as fraudsters.

- How did these two guys--

and I don't think it's a stretch to say thugs--

how are they meeting with our political leaders?

None of this raises red flags?

- Criminals with no credibility.

- Call Giuliani & Associates.

Lev Parnas. - Hey.

- And Igor Fruman.

- Hey, you guys.

[laughter]

- And therefore, their testimony

and what they have to say doesn't count.

- I don't know those gentlemen.

Now, it's possible I have a picture with them,

because I have a picture with everybody.

I don't know them.

- I welcome him to say that even more.

Every time he says that, I'll show 'em another picture.

- He's lying? - He's lying.

- Ooh.

- What people probably didn't expect is that

Lev photo-documented everything.

He literally had the receipts.

Over 750 pages of those materials

formed the basis for the vote on the first impeachment.

- On this vote, the yeas are 229,

the nays are 198.

Present is one.

Article 2 is adopted.

- So out of the 300-page impeachment articles,

100 of pages of those are my direct evidence.

Though I was not able to testify,

the Republicans made a huge stink

and they didn't allow me in.

What were they scared of?

- Do you know if Mr. Giuliani was ever in contact with

Mr. Barr, specifically about the fact

that he was trying to get Ukraine

to announce these investigations into Joe Biden?

- Oh, absolutely. - Mr. Barr knew about that.

- Mr. Barr had to have known everything.

- It was clearly a high level of concern

at the highest levels

of the Justice Department and Congress.

A lot of people had to be involved

to try to keep the truth from coming out.

- Bill Barr not only politicized,

he weaponized the DOJ on behalf of Donald Trump

to go after his political enemies

and help his political friends.

- Swaddled the critic, shut up the witness,

changed the charging decisions

to cover up to try to protect the president.

I believe that this was worse than Watergate.

- Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani,

sentenced to 20 months in federal prison

in Lower Manhattan.

- Parnas has been found guilty

of federal campaign finance criminal charges.

Prosecutors accused Parnas of hatching a scheme

to funnel millions of dollars in funds

from a wealthy Russian financier into US elections.

- I always used to watch cult movies.

- Well, you know what they think of me?

They think I'm the Son of God.

- Think, you know, something wrong with these people.

Never happen to me.

- People play games, friend.

They'll lie and they'll lie.

- But by God's grace, if I didn't get arrested,

indicted, de-cultinized,

whatever caused me to stop following this madman

and to be able to wake up again,

I would have been divorced. I would have lost my family.

- He just got caught up.

And by the time he realized that, unfortunately,

he was already behind bars.

- Trump inspired me, for the first time in my life,

to vote, and I did.

I voted for Joe Biden, 2020.

- Hopefully, it's not too late for other people.

- I betrayed Ukraine. I betrayed America.

I'm sorry.

- When I met him,

I saw a man that, you know, he was a broken man.

He paid a huge price for all of this.

Luckily, he's got a strong family and that remained.

- And since the day of my arrest,

every day for the past five years,

I've been saying I'm sorry to my wife, to my family.

And I'll be saying sorry for the rest of my life.

[indistinct chatter]

I saw Marie Yovanovitch testify in the impeachment.

And to see the pain and to see what she went through,

what I put her through--

- President Trump said

that I was bad news to another world leader

and that I would be going through some things.

- She didn't deserve any of this.

- It was-- it was a terrible moment.

- I feel foolish.

I feel disgusted. I feel--I'm ashamed of myself.

[indistinct chatter]

I truly believed we were helping America.

But looking back at it now, we've destroyed America.

[clamoring]

We have such division.

People are at each other's throats.

[chanting]

And the sad part?

That was exactly what Vladimir Putin wanted.

And we gave it to him on a silver platter.

And how ironic is it?

The Reagan Republicans were the anti-Soviet Union Russia,

stopped the Cold War, pushed for democracy.

- Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

[cheering]

- And now here we have the Republicans

screaming literally Russian propaganda.

- Why shouldn't I root for Russia? Because I am.

- Putin ain't woke.

- Putin's a killer.

- A lot of killers-- we got a lot of killers.

What, you think our country's so innocent?

- I don't know how anyone can look at Putin

and think anything but a monster,

just like I don't think you can look at Trump--

I can't look at Trump without thinking that he's a monster.

- Anybody that's ever been around Donald Trump

to work for him at the White House knows the truth.

He's unfit for office.

- I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump.

- Pence is joining a remarkably large choir

of former Trump administration officials

who have come out against him.

Trump's former attorney general,

two former defense secretaries, two of his chiefs of staff,

two national security advisors...

- I was as close as you could get to him.

I did all his dirty work.

And Donald Trump doesn't care about anybody

except for himself.

He doesn't care about the Constitution.

He doesn't care about the United States.

Because Donald Trump doesn't want to be president.

He wants to be a dictator.

He wants to be Vladimir Putin, president for life.

I hope one day not only will the country forgive me,

Ukraine will forgive me.

I hope one day Hunter Biden could really forgive me.

I feel a lot of responsibility

because of our actions in Ukraine.

Pushing all of this disinformation against

Hunter Biden has now caused real problems,

real criminal problems that he is now facing.

- The first child of a sitting US president

has been convicted of a crime.

- To watch Hunter Biden, an American citizen

that has nothing to do with politics, a son--

[voice breaks] And I have sons--

[sniffles] To watch the pain I caused in his life--

- A jury in Delaware finding presidential son

Hunter Biden guilty of three federal counts.

- I just hope one day,

I can say I'm sorry and make it right.

[somber music]

♪ ♪♪

- Ready, babe?

- Are you ready?

♪ ♪♪

- Hunter.

It's been a long time.

- Thanks for making the trip, my friend.

[soft dramatic music]

- 2018, November,

we were sitting with Rudy in New York

at the Grand Havana Room.

Rudy gets a call from one of his investigators

and starts telling him all this stuff about Burisma

and all kinds of stuff.

And Rudy, like usual, he'd sit back down.

We'd have drinks, have cigars,

and he'd tell us everything that was going on.

- Yeah. - And he starts talking.

A few months before my partner Igor got sent a video

from Ukraine, from one of these that we later found out

to be a Russian operative-- the infamous video

of your father basically saying--

- Well, son of a bitch.

[laughter] Got fired.

- Rudy took a look at that video and basically said,

we got you, Joe.

A week later, we were at the White House.

- Yeah.

- We're meeting with Trump in the Red Room.

A week later, we were in Ukraine

looking for Viktor Shokin to pressure him

to give us dirt or make up information

to be able to start this whole thing.

- I'll see you in Ukraine soon. - Yeah.

- When did it cross over from being

a harebrained Rudy Giuliani operation

in concert with Trump to the DOJ?

When did Trump's lackeys inside the DOJ

begin to also conspire to, like--you know, to take me on?

- I mean, basically from the very beginning,

from that first initial meeting with Trump.

And right after that, Giuliani started

calling all his contacts at the DOJ and FBI

to start putting pressure to look into you,

to look into your dad and all of your Ukraine dealings.

You have to understand, Hunter, at that time,

I truly believed there was a deep state.

I truly believed that you were up to some shit.

But there was never any criminality in anything.

That's the whole thing.

They were just basically, you know, innuendos,

conspiracy theories, but no actual facts.

The crazy part, I mean, I feel embarrassed, Hunter.

I mean, I got your bank records.

- How did they get my bank records?

My bank records aren't even on a computer.

- I got an email from John Solomon

that said that his friends at the FBI got your records.

I don't know where, how, what.

- So the FBI secretly subpoenaed

and got my bank records under the Trump administration,

handed them to John Solomon,

and then Rudy Giuliani recirculates them

back into the DOJ and on the media?

- Absolutely.

John Solomon, him and Hannity and Fox

had a whole system go out. - Yeah.

So Fox was definitely like--

so Fox definitely, like, directly involved?

- Oh, 100%.

- I watched after you got arrested

and then clearly were kind of shunned.

They turned their back on you.

And at that point, I--

just so you know, I wasn't very sympathetic.

- Oh, I'm sure. [laughter]

I'm sure.

- What conversations have you had

with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman?

- I don't know those gentlemen.

- What they did, though, is that they so quickly

turned you into this supervillain.

- It may very well be, with these Russian payments

to Lev Parnas, that Lev himself

is part of a disinformation campaign.

- A guy that's under indictment,

a guy that's a known grifter,

a guy that had a company called Fraud Inc.

that he ran into the ground.

- The man is a demonstrated liar.

- And they, you know, go after your personal life.

And they talk about, you know, that you're really a Russian.

I mean, all of these things.

Similarly, I gave them a lot of--

- Ammunition. Yeah. - Ammunition.

Addiction is never an excuse, but it's an explanation.

It's an explanation why I ended up in

some of the rooms that I ended up in,

doing things that I'm ashamed of today.

- The best thing that could have ever happened to me

was getting arrested, as crazy as that sounds.

- It really takes a big person

to not only admit that they're wrong,

but to do so in public

and to do it on the stage you did.

- Lev Parnas was the centerpiece

of a bomb-throwing congressional hearing

on the Biden impeachment inquiry this week.

- Today, I admit my own wrongdoings.

I have been a convicted federal election campaign

and fraud crimes and served my sentence.

Despite rigorous attempts by those in power to silence me,

I will be silenced no longer.

- To go in front of a hostile committee

in Congress that you know has no compunction

to break every rule to embarrass you

and to put yourself in that position

just so you could tell the truth--

- The American people have been lied to by Donald Trump,

Rudy Giuliani, and various cohorts

of individuals in government and media positions.

They created falsehoods to serve their own interests,

knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation.

- One of the hardest things to do in life is to make amends.

And it's one of the principles of, like, the program I follow

in terms of my own addiction.

But to do it the way that you've done it,

on TV, in public, while you're getting

the goddamn hell beat out of you--

- Sounds like everyone here today,

the only one working for a Russian oligarch was you.

- They didn't listen to the truth

because if they will listen to the truth--

- The question Mr. Gaetz had is for--

- They didn't want to hear the truth.

You can't handle the truth, Matt Gaetz.

- What I saw was somebody with just

an enormous reserve of character

when it really counted.

- Today, I ask you to consider the following.

In nearly a year traveling the world

and interviewing officials in different countries,

I found precisely zero evidence

of the Bidens' corruption in Ukraine.

The only information I ever pushed on the Bidens

in Ukraine has come from one source

and one source only-- Russia and Russian agents.

- And so, bottom of my heart,

I promise you, you're a hero to me.

- Thank you so much.

- I was really, really, really proud.

I was proud of you.

- Everything was for the ultimate benefit

of Donald Trump and thereby Vladimir Putin,

who used this narrative to manipulate the public

ahead of the 2020 elections.

Sadly, they are still doing this today

as we approach the 2024 elections.

"Hunter, I want you to know I wrote this book

"to tell the truth about what happened

"during the Trump administration.

"He used your battle with addiction for his own agenda,

"to hurt you and your family and your father.

"You were a casualty in all of this.

"I regret very truly my decision to work

"with those that tried to bring you and your family down.

"I will do everything in my power

to clear your name going forward."

- Thank you, my friend. You know, I'll treasure this.

And one thing I've learned

is that truth and love always prevail.

May take a little while. But the fact of the matter is,

we get up every day and we do the next right thing, we win.

- [voice breaking] And I'm sorry for what--

- Yeah.

Hey. - That wasn't me.

[speaks indistinctly] - Hey.

- I promise you. - Hey. Listen, listen.

We get a second chance. - Yeah.

- Both of us. - We do. That's right.

- Both of us. Yeah. - We do. Both of us.

[soft dramatic music]

♪ ♪♪