Joyce Vance: Lev Parnas Appears To Be Fully Credible Witness

By Aliza Worthington — January 16, 2020

The "wretched hive of scum and villainy" that is the GOP (thank you, David Corn, for the Star Wars reference) claimed to have never ever met Lev Parnas.

David Corn is dissecting the Maddow/Parnas interview with @Lawrence and pretty aptly compares the Trump Hotel bar to the Mos Eisley cantina from Star Wars - in the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" pic.twitter.com/gynf8qUxl5

— tblue🐊 (@tbluegator) January 16, 2020

Now that their lies have been exposed to the world via an endless trove of photographs and texts showing otherwise, they will try to say Parnas is completely un-credible. After all, he's a cRiMiNaL! He's indicted on campaign finances violation charges, right? How can we believe a word he says?

We could spend hours on the levels of projection in that reflexive argument we'll inevitably hear, but before we need to hear it, Joyce Vance gave us the ammunition we need to refute it last night when talking to Brian Williams, just an hour after the eye-popping interview with Rachel Maddow aired.

VANCE: On the one hand, we have to be cautious. Everything that Mr. Parnas, who is someone who is under indictment, everything that he has says to be corroborated. But at the same time it is very consistent with testimony that we have heard from other witnesses. In some cases it seems to fill in blanks. And something that impressed me was when it came to these allegations -- or rather the text messages from Robert Hyde about the surveillance and perhaps threat to Ambassador Yovanovitch, Parnas would not go there. And he said. "No, I knew that he wasn't for real." That I think builds his credibility. If he was making everything up, he would have agreed to that as well. But he put the brakes on.

WILLIAMS: He used a double negative in fact when describing Mr. Hyde. He said, "I've never seen him when he he wasn't drunk." And that was notable. Additionally, to say, "Who am I? Why would these people meet with me?" That's the opposite of a claim of grandiosity that you sometimes get with big-level witnesses.

VANCE: There are these little moments with witnesses that help juries decide whether or not to believe them. And it's an informal moment like that where he sort of puts out his hands and says, "Why else would they meet with me?" And that's very credible.

Later on in the video above, Vance explains some of the technological, legal procedural reasons we can assume Lev Parnas' evidence is trustworthy, and our knowing about it is not the result of a leak.

VANCE: So this was actually not a leak. This was an official, sanctioned process, where Parnas' attorney asked for permission to turn material over, received permission to turn it over. So when the FBI does an image, say, of a cell phone, that's just a big raw piece of data you that get back. Some work has to be done to make it usable. And that is then what we saw Parnas and his attorney work very quickly, as we heard Rachel say, to turn that over so it would be part of the record the House transmitted to the Senate. Once the House transmitted the articles of impeachment, that record was closed. So, there was apparently a rush at the end to include this material in the record that the Senate can consider if it chooses to look at the evidence.

WILLIAMS: And I heard it put tonight that it's further of benefit to Mr. Parnas that he has not had these devices in his possession for weeks, if not months. There's been no ability on his part to go back and correct or delete things.

VANCE: That's right. At least that's technically correct. There's no reason to believe those devices would not have been secured to prevent, say, some alteration using the cloud. That would have been detected. They were probably turned off and images were taken immediately. And it's those images that were taken at the time that they were seized that would be used to generate evidence. So this works in Parnas' favor. The fact he's turning information over while he's still under indictment. And that could conceivably be used against him. Certainly his statements tonight. These are factors that tend to build credibility for him.

Note that Joyce Vance said that there was a rush to include this evidence in the impeachment articles, so that "the Senate can consider if it chooses to look at the evidence."

Because in this Mos Eisley of a government, how can we feel secure in any assumption that a GOP-led Senate WOULD look at the evidence that their president betrayed our nation?