Donald Trump Jr. slammed the media over attempts to tie Lev Parnas to President Trump but said that he and his father had met the Ukrainian fixer.
The president’s son said he and his father had met Parnas multiple times at fundraisers but still could not “pick this guy out of a lineup.” He echoed Trump’s defense that the president takes pictures with thousands of supporters, arguing that the fact that Parnas and Trump were photographed together does not mean the two worked closely.
“I met [Parnas] at some fundraiser events. He was a donor to a super PAC, [and he] shows up at some of these things like anything else,” Trump Jr. told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo during an appearance on Sunday Morning Futures. “I didn’t even realize he was Ukrainian. I thought he was Israeli.”
“If someone is a donor, they get in line, they sit at a dinner with 50 people. That’s how it works. The media then takes it and says, ‘Oh, they’re buddies,'” Trump Jr. continued. “I guarantee you my father couldn’t pick this guy out of a lineup. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t taken pictures with him.”
Parnas, an associate of the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and who was recently indicted for violating campaign finance law, has denied earlier claims that he spoke with Trump about his and Giuliani’s work in Ukraine.
On Jan. 14, the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, released pages of messages provided by Parnas that suggested a surveillance operation took place against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Parnas sat for an interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, which aired the next day.
Parnas has said he wants to testify in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial and claimed the president is scared of him because of what he knows. Trump has repeatedly denied knowing Parnas.
