House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced in a letter addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on Tuesday that new material “pertinent to the impeachment inquiry” had been delivered to the panel on two flash drives.
While Schiff noted that one storage device “contained sensitive personal information” and therefore could not have it contents released publicly, he said the other flash drive contained records produced by Lev Parnas, one of the two associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who were issued congressional subpoenas in November 2019.
The collection of items obtained from Parnas’ compliance with the subpoena reportedly contains a redacted copy of his passport, handwritten notes, text message conversations between Parnas and Giuliani and other messages linking him to former Ukrainian prosecutors Yuriy Lutsenko Viktor Shokin.
Also included in the cache was a May 10, 2019, letter from Giuliani to then-Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Mr. Giuliani’s letter makes clear that his trip, which he publicly described at the time as an effort to ‘meddle in an investigation,’ was undertaken with the knowledge and support of President Trump,” the House Intelligence Committee noted within the “enclosure” section of the document.
In a joint statement, Schiff, Nadler, House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) noted on Tuesday that the addition of materials obtained from Parnas and the other classified evidence demonstrates “there is more evidence relevant to the President’s scheme, but they have been concealed by the President himself.”
“There cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate without the documents that President Trump is refusing to provide to Congress,” the House Democrats said, adding that further “evidence of the President’s misconduct” may be produced and made known to the public.
After weeks of waiting, the House is set to vote on Wednesday to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate and continue the process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced Tuesday that he anticipates the matter to move forward and has tentatively scheduled the Senate trial to begin on January 21.