A Ukrainian associate of Trump attorney and Nosferatu cosplayer Rudy Giuliani told Politico that Giuliani was first informed of compromising information in May 2019 by a different Ukrainian contact seeking help to avoid legal action by the US Justice Department.
The claim throws additional doubt on the provenance of the laptop that mysteriously appeared at a Delaware computer repair shop and clouds the timeline Giuliani has outlined about his involvement of the information supposedly found on the laptop.
Parnas, who’s charged with making illegal campaign contributions, says that Giuliani was told about information by an associated of Hunter Biden who was acting as an intermediary for Burisma’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky. The man, named Vitaly Pruss, told Giuliani in May 2019 that Zlochevsky had compromising information on Hunter Biden. He also claimed that the information was in the hands of the Russian government.
The account pushes the timeline for the Trump cabal’s attempts to uncover derogatory information on Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden. Previously, the efforts were thought to have started in July 2019, about the same time Trump tried to solicit election help from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a phone call.
It also further casts doubt on the narrative put forth by Giuliani on how he came to learn about the information the was supposedly discovered on a laptop dropped off at a Wilmington computer repair shop, run by a legally-blind man, in April 2019.
The shop owner, a Trump supporter named John Paul “JP” Mac Isaac, claimed that he provided the computer hard drive to Giuliani after the laptop was not picked up from his shop. However, Giuliani claims to have gotten the information in July 2019 from Mac Isaac, before the “abandonment” period specified on contract for Mac Isaac’s shop.
Additionally, Mac Isaac claims that an unknown person dropped off three laptops for repair, but he would not confirm that he claimed Hunter Biden dropped off the computers. A former employee of the shop said Mac Isaac’s vision is so poor he has to have his face inches from the screen of the computer monitors he uses and that he uses a cane to navigate around the shop.
Mac Isaac has also been inconsistent on when he provided the hard drives to both Giuliani and to the FBI. He claims he assumed the computers were Hunter Biden’s because of the information the computers and a “Beau Biden Foundation” sticker on one of the computers.
Further clouding the issue are reports that salacious Hunter Biden information and photos were being offered for sale–millions of dollars–in mid-September 2019.
Pruss, the intermediary for the founder of Burisma, also tried to provide Giuliani information that reportedly came from former Burisma CFO, Alexander Gorbunenko. Parnas, Giuliani’s associate, was boarding a flight to Ukraine to reportedly pick up information on Hunter Biden when he was arrested October 10, 2019.
Parnas said the he was tasked with getting information from Gorbunenko at the direction of Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian billionaire fighting extradition to the United States.