Lev Parnas says Jared Kushner sat in a meeting about what happens after the midterms and named Hakeem Jeffries the weak spot. Kushner had his reasons, Parnas told Narativ Live Tuesday. Kushner worked alongside Jeffries on the First Step Act last year and came away with a read on him. Trump sent Kushner rather than anyone on the payroll because Kushner holds no official role — “plus, he could talk about things that people in the administration can’t,” Parnas said. Kushner also swims in the donor world, and Jeffries now raises heavily from the Wall Street corporate money swimming there with him. Then the tell. The New York Times reported that Kushner recommended Jeffries speak to Susie Wiles. Parnas recognized that hand-off, because he ran it himself. Trump sent him to Volodymyr Zelensky in 2018 and 2019 to deliver the threats “that Bolton or Pompeo would never say” — cut the aid, all of it. “When I was done with that and they agreed to do it, that’s when I would hand it over and say, okay, now Pompeo could go do the official business and sign the deal,” Parnas said. He reads the referral to Wiles as the signature on a bargain already struck. “I do believe that there was a deal cut,” he said. Parnas is careful about what he holds. “I don’t have the full detail of what happened,” he said. He reported the run-up and read the rest off his own years inside the operation, plus Jeffries on CNN that day, sliding back into old Democratic deal-making language. Nobody stops every investigation, Parnas said. He described a trade: “concentrate on these, but stay away from these type of situations.” He named what he believes is walled off — the Kushner and Witkoff money, the Trump money — and what has quietly left the conversation entirely: DOGE. Zev put it flat. “It sounds to me like he’s trying to buy him off.” Parnas says the offer works because the Democratic Party is at war with itself. Jeffries came out against the DSA that day, and so did Jared Moskowitz. Trump’s people widen that rift on purpose — “the money is being pushed into both sides of the field.” He drew the darkest version himself: Democrats take the House, arrive discombobulated, and Jeffries spends his term holding the caucus together instead of issuing subpoenas. “That’s exactly what my job was, to do these little things,” he said. “So for me, it’s like PTSD.” Trump is also letting gas prices run high on purpose, he added, so the pain becomes the Democrats’ problem the day they win. Zev opened the show on the Supreme Court’s USPS order, saying he had heard the semi-nightmare version — not the cliff, but not fine. Mitchell confirmed it, then turned on the coverage. Outlets were “screaming... Supreme Court hands Trump win,” she said, “and that is so totally not accurate whatsoever.” Mitchell explained the ruling: the case was not ripe. Nothing concrete had happened, so no court had jurisdiction. “Courts aren’t allowed to future trip.” The order lets Trump go forward with the rule — “but that doesn’t mean he gets to implement the rule.” In the paragraph that matters, the justices say the administration may try. “That doesn’t mean that will be lawful.” The last sentence, she said, shows the Court already expects the merits on appeal. Zev pushed back. The USPS has issued the official rule from the Postmaster General and intends to institute it. “It’s going to be only some people that get their ballots,” he said. Then the fear, out loud: “By then they would have rigged the election and won the election and it would be too late to do anything about it.” Mitchell walked through the machinery. Trump’s people need a portal, and they need states to upload their mail-in voter rolls. “And the moment they start the first one, that’s when the lawsuits that will be ripe are going to hit the courts.” She is “100% confident” the filings sit drafted already. Seventy days is short. “But in court time... that’s enough.” Parnas prayed she was right, then said why he worries anyway. Russ Vought and Stephen Miller do not need to win. “The win is sometimes not actually getting a win. It’s delaying and causing chaos.” He fears something physical: the mail ballots never go out while the courts sort it. He is not worried about 2028. He is worried about November. Mitchell reads Trump the way she reads a filing. He is already “greasing the wheels for the excuse for why they’re going to lose these midterms” — “well, you know, if I was on the ballot, but I’m not on the ballot.” Judge Engelmayer spent 67 pages telling Ghislaine Maxwell she gets no new trial. Maxwell has been filing pro se, Mitchell said, “which means without a lawyer, which is always... basically stupid.” She filed a voluminous addendum past his deadline; he took it anyway, so the ruling would survive appeal. His answer to her newly-discovered-evidence claim, in Mitchell’s summary: “no freaking way.” His first paragraph sets her alongside, in its own word, “the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.” Zev raised the trap himself. A pardon means “you can’t always plead the fifth afterwards because you’ve lost that excuse.” Mitchell flagged that she is “not a pardon attorney,” then laid out the doctrine and got it right. A pardon “wipes the slate clean... it’s like it never happened,” so “you don’t really have the Fifth Amendment right.” A commutation “still keeps the conviction on the record,” and the privilege survives it. Both reached for Dr. Fauci. Mitchell said Congress can offer immunity for testimony about a particular act, though it cannot touch her conviction. Maxwell has a great deal to offer a future prosecutor, Zev noted, or a Democratic-led committee. Watch what Trump does, not what his people say, Parnas said. Todd Blanche says no pardon. “But meanwhile, she was transferred to a facility that we speak about every day that should never happen.” Trump left Paul Manafort in prison for two years because the connection was toxic with an election coming, while Bill Barr intervened over a Rikers transfer and kept him in federal custody. The pardon came right before Trump left office. Parnas watches the transfer, not the denial. Lisa Phillips, a survivor, is in the UK working to bring charges against Maxwell there, so a pardon in Washington would not leave her free anywhere. Parnas offered to help. Then he warned anyone waiting on a Democratic House to open the files. “The Democrats are not some kind of heroes when it comes to the Epstein files because they also covered up the Epstein files,” he said. Both parties. “The cover-up is worse than the crime in this one.” Parnas says he is digging now for who set the Kushner meeting and what changed hands in it. Seventy days out, Hakeem Jeffries could answer that himself. Thank you LC - Silence is Complicity, Jason Gael, PJ Schuster, Assemblywoman Debra Mazzarelli, Lori Modafferi, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lev Parnas! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
