Book: Shadow Diplomacy

Lev Parnas's 2024 book is mentioned in passing in Rachel Maddow's movie about him, so I figured it might make a fun read.

The first few pages make clear—or rather don't—the dizzying web of oligarchs and organized crime and politicians (and combinations of the three) who run Ukrainian and Russian industry and politics.  To move in those circles one must be either very smart or very wily.  People end up dead all the time.

So when buffoons like DJT or Rudy tried to move into those spheres, they were soundly thrashed.  Lev was, according to his own testimony anyway, the interpreter who "got things done."

The book is not from a major publisher.  Though well done, little touches give it the look & feel of a self-published book.  Having done a couple of those myself, I see mistakes only a first-timer would make.

And the writing is stilted, even with a co-writer (Jerry Langton).

But the story should be fun.

The book has been spell-checked but not proofread.  Wrong words or missing words are not uncommon.

And some of the details of the stories he tells are different than what he told Rachel in the film.

So, yeah.  Petty hustler and con man.  Everything deserves considerable salt.

Like Sam Giancana's book "Double Cross," Lev's is full of unfinished stories and "hints and allegations" and passing mentions of things he was involved in that he really doesn't want to talk about. It's a liar's tale full of possible truths and probable fictions.

Quote :

Sheferovsky found out that I had been pursuing a Soviet scientist who had isolated a useful chemical I could sell.

The chronology is all mixed up.  The 1980s and the 2010s rub shoulders with no warning of the 30 years in between.

Piker's grammatical mistakes:

Quote :

But on that day at the beginning of October 2016, me and about 20 well-heeled Trump supporters came to Le Palais Royale....

Next page:

Quote :

Before he left, Trump invited Pereira and I to be his special guests...

Not too impressed with the ghost writer.

NoCoPilot wrote:

The chronology is all mixed up.  The 1980s and the 2010s rub shoulders with no warning of the 30 years in between.

Parnas remained a staunch Trump supporter until he went to jail, and the veil was lifted from his eyes. This book is, confusingly, written from two opposing perspectives, one pro-Trump, when the events described took place, and the other anti-Trump when the book was written.

Could've used an editor.

In chapter 20 Parnas describes a fundraiser he attended at Mar-A-Lago, and how the conversation had to revolve around what Trump wanted to hear.  

Quote :

After the President enters the room, he begins by falsely claiming that his popularity is higher than its ever been. He continues to praise himself to cheerful laughs from the guests. There is a great deal of complaining from Trump about familiar themes—NATO and the problems with getting his wall up. He also takes time out to criticize Hillary Clinton and Maxine Waters, who he says possesses a "low IQ."

He asks me about Ukraine, and I told him that they love Trump (playing the flattery game). I tell him that Ukraine is a vast country with tremendous natural resources including oil.

"Ukraine has oil?" Trump asks, clearly surprised.

igor Frumas chimes in and adds that Ukraine is Number 1 in Europe, but has no infrastructure to get it to global markets.

"How long would they last in a fight with Russia?" he asks.  Clearly he knew something.

Just the day before I ran across this old interview about Trump cheating at golf -- even when nobody else is around, even when playing friends.  He not only kicks his ball onto the green and doesn't count muffed shots, he actually goes as far as kicking other people's ball off the green.  He not only has to win, he has to make sure everyone else loses.

There's a lot of talk about how DJT believes he's a victim of the Deep State and has to fight them at every step of the way.

But DJT has many contacts with Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Cypriot, Syrian, and Baltic oligarchs and their immense wealth and corrupt influences... yes, there's a Deep State. That's what put DJT in office.

As usual he's projecting.

And 2024 won't be decided by the election.

NoCoPilot wrote:

As usual he's projecting.

The topsy-turvy world where serial felon Trump rails against the "Biden crime family" is an Orwellian nightmare which I'm not sure how we climb out of.

Mrs NoCo just came back from visiting family in Minnesota.  At one point she went into her sister's garage and saw Trump signs, carefully removed from the lawn for her visit.

The world is upside down. With all the evidence, with all the trials and convictions, with everything as plain as the nose on your face, people still don't get it.

Lev writes about enlisting Yuriy Lutsenko, a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor, to help remove corruption-fighting US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch by making up stories about her being corrupt.  Black is white, up is down, Trump will protect women.

Even after President Harris is inaugurated, we'll still have the damage done to our shared understanding of basic reality.

The last half of Lev's book is about the events that led to Trump's first impeachment, where he withheld aid until the Ukrainians would announce an investigation of Hunter Biden.

Even if there was no investigation. 

The story Lev tells is hilarious in its incompetence. Giuliani was told over and over by everyone from top to bottom that there was no case against Hunter—he joined Burisma in 2014, and the investigation his father supposedly squashed was in 2012, two years earlier—but Rudy had his mind made up and inconvenient facts would not dissuade him.

He comes off as slightly less than fully functional.

Lev Parnas wrote:

The illusion of the Cult of Trump had been shattered. It was all over for me. I finally saw Trump and Giuliani for what they were—two-bit hucksters who were using their gangster mentality to shake down the country, even the whole world. They were either too stupid or too deluded to see that Putin was playing them like a pair of marionettes. They had turned the U.S.A. Into a laughingstock and something of a Russian puppet on foreign policy. The thought of them selling out our country for a few bucks or to satisfy the urges of a boy who wasn't hugged enough made me sick. 

And of course, after the whole scandal came out in public and led to Trump's first impeachment, both he and Giuliani were "too stupid or too deluded" to deny everything or work up an alternative explanation. They basically came out and said, yeah we did that.  What are you going to do about it?

In the final pages, Parnas describes his role in the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump.

Which was... nothing.

He was all prepared to testify, he had reams and reams of documentation, he had names and dates... but Senate Republicans didn't want to hear it. They voted acquittal without hearing any evidence from anybody.

The House Impeachment inquiry tried to bring him in for questioning, but he was wearing an ankle bracelet at the time and House rules bar any electronic gadgets.  Yeah, THAT dumb.

In fact, when Parnas went on trial and was convicted of campaign finance fraud, all of the other charges against him that involved Rudy Giuliani or Donald Trump just... mysteriously disappeared.  Nobody wanted to go down that road. It was as if those crimes were too horrible to air in public, ever.

Lev was put into solitary confinement.

So his story would disappear from the public discourse.

So after serving 20 months (for a crime he didn't realize he'd committed) he is now on a mission to expose the former CIC for what he is.

Will the law ever catch up to DJT?  Stay tuned.