Republicans have spent months distancing themselves from Lev Parnas, the indicted businessman who worked with Rudy Giuliani to carry out President Trump’s scheme to pressure Ukraine to investigate his domestic political opponents.
“I don’t know those gentlemen,” President Trump said last October after Parnas and his partner Igor Fruman were arrested as they attempted to flee the U.S. The claim quickly proved preposterous. Trump had personally met with Fruman and Parnas at least ten times, CNN reported, and many of those encounters were memorialized in photo form.
On MSNBC Wednesday, Parnas told Rachel Maddow that Trump’s claims about not knowing him and Fruman are absurd. “He knew exactly who we were. He knew exactly who I was especially because I interacted with him at a lot of events,” Parnas said. On CNN Thursday, he added that if Trump continues denying their relationship, he’ll continue releasing new pictures of them together.
Trump is far from the only powerful Republican to have said “cheese” with Parnas, who has amassed an impressive collection of pictures with high-profile members of the Trump administration, the Trump family, and the GOP. Here is the public portion of that collection, showing Parnas with:
