Lev Parnas says Zampolli’s firing is a house-clearing before the Democrats take the House. Olga Lautman says Republika Srpska is a Kremlin proxy and anyone doing business there works for Moscow. On Narativ Live, the two connect five people around Trump to one region.
Paolo Zampolli was not fired for the deals, Lev Parnas told Narativ Live on Friday. He was fired because of who is coming. “Now the Democrats are about to take over,” he said. “They’re trying to clear house from anybody to give Democrats fresh meat to go after.” The envoy’s title was the problem, not the business. Parnas remembered asking Rudy Giuliani for a special-envoy post before his own Ukraine errands and being told that “as soon as we make you special envoy, we’re going to put a target on your back with the Democrats.” Trump, he said, “runs shadow diplomacies and then he runs official things,” and Zampolli is more useful to him now in the shadow.
Olga Lautman put the region in one line. Republika Srpska is the Serb half of Bosnia where Zampolli took a document of hydroelectric projects in February. “It’s a proxy of the Kremlin,” she said. “Anyone who does business there is pretty much working on behalf of the Kremlin.” She reached for Paul Manafort, who worked Montenegro and Georgia against American interests for decades. The pattern in Washington now, she said, is the Kremlin’s own: rival insiders fighting for deals while the top takes its cut. “He doesn’t like anyone grifting more than him,” she said of Trump. “He’s like Putin.”
The count on the table was five. Zampolli, who posted himself with Romania’s energy minister and worked nuclear energy in Hungary. Kimberly Guilfoyle, who pushed American gas through a Greek builder toward Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, the Journal reported, and told Greece’s energy minister at dinner: “We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here.” Katie Wiles, whose firm Srpska pays $35,000 a month. Chris LaCivita and James Blair, paid through a law firm Srpska hired. The one name both Guilfoyle’s and Zampolli’s deals reach is Bogdan Ivan, Romania’s energy minister.
Both guests added a sixth name. Lautman has published an investigation into Konstantin Sokolov, the Trump ballroom donor the State Department put in charge of a $201 million Caucasus fund; Reuters reported Thursday that he holds major Armenia assets and a history of Russian business. Parnas said he worked with the Reuters reporters on it.
On Starlink, Parnas heard 2019. “It’s basically the same exact thing he did in 2019 when he sent me to give them first ultimatum,” he said. “Congress wasn’t aware. He just stopped congressional approved aid back then.” On the diesel, Lautman does not believe the price is money. “I have never seen a man sweat so much to do something for Russia in this quick of a time,” she said. “I’m very curious what it is that Russia is handing in return.” Her call on where it ends: a blanket pardon for everyone in the administration, “from January 20th until whatever day.”
What Putin can do, the show closed, is mess with the elections. That may be what he is giving back.
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NARATIV EXCLUSIVE: State Fires Zampolli Without Probing His "Possibly Unlawful" Deals
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