President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani quietly met with a Kremlin-insider days after being informed that the Russian authorities had obtained damaging information on Hunter Biden, Forensic News can reveal.
Lev Parnas, Giuliani’s former confidant and partner in the search for material on the Bidens, confirmed to Forensic News that he was in the room when Giuliani was told on May 30, 2019, that a Ukrainian oligarch and Russian actors had Hunter Biden’s emails and other salacious material on the Presidential candidate’s son. The message was relayed to Giuliani by his longtime “go-between” for former Soviet Union business ventures, Vitaly Pruss.
Parnas, speaking in an interview with Forensic News, said that Pruss informed the room in downtown Manhattan that the Ukrainian oligarch for which Hunter Biden worked, Mykola Zlochevsky, and Russian authorities had “pictures of Hunter with drug paraphernalia and prostitutes, text messages, and emails.” Pruss, according to Parnas, previously arranged for Hunter Biden to travel to meet a Minister in Kazakhstan where some of the compromising material was gathered.
Giuliani believed Pruss and was eager to get the information, according to Parnas who said that Giuliani was unbothered by the alleged sources of the information on Biden. Efforts were made to get material from Zlochevsky, but the ultimate fate of these efforts was unknown to Parnas after his arrest in October 2019.
Time Magazine first reported that potentially damaging information on Hunter Biden was circulating in Ukraine in May 2019, and Politico reported the content of the May 2019 meeting.
Now, Forensic News can now report that just three weeks after the meeting, Giuliani met with Ara Abramyan, a businessman who has previously said of Russian President Vladimir Putin, “he gives orders, and I carry them out.”
Vitaly Pruss and TriGlobal
Pruss is the President and Founder of TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, a shadowy consulting firm with offices in New York, London, Zurich, Moscow, Kyiv, and Almaty. Pruss and TriGlobal have facilitated numerous meetings and partnerships between Giuliani and Eastern European politicians and businessmen over the course of more than a decade. In an interview with NBC, Pruss said his relationship with Giuliani goes back to 2003.
According to business records obtained by Forensic News, Vitaly Pruss had at least three LLCs registered in Delaware and New Jersey under the TriGlobal umbrella: Tri-Global Strategic Ventures LLC (2005), Tri-Global Partners LLC (2000), and Tri-Global Concord LLC (2006). Another company registered to Pruss is named Beenex LLC (2006) and its stated business purpose is “Asset Management.” In Florida, Pruss registered TriGlobal Capital Asset Management LLC in 2011. It was dissolved in 2017.
Pruss did not respond to a request for comment about TriGlobal, the various LLCs, his relationship with Giuliani, or any other matters.
At the top of TriGlobal’s Advisory Board is Ara Abramyan, an Armenian-born businessman who reconstructed the Kremlin buildings in the 1990s and has since been in the inner circle of Moscow’s power structures.
The get-together between Abramyan and Giuliani in June 2019 was documented on the former’s personal Facebook and Instagram pages.
[su_quote style=”default” cite=”Ara Abramyan on Facebook” class=”fancy-quote”]
During a short business trip to the United States, Ara Abramyan held talks with the adviser to the President of the United States, D. Trump, former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani.
Ara Abramyan and Rudy Giuliani have known each other since the 1990s and have been good friends since then.
[/su_quote]
It wasn’t their first meeting. In November 2018, Giuliani spoke at a conference in Armenia attended by various political leaders, including Kremlin officials. The trip made headlines as it came in the midst of the Mueller probe into connections between Trump associates and the Russian government or its proxies. Abramyan was at the conference, sat for a joint TV interview with Giuliani, and seemed to be with him nearly every step of the way. During the trip, Giuliani insisted that he was visiting as a private citizen to discuss cybersecurity.
Months later, Abramyan flew into New York and met with Giuliani once again.
A thorough examination of Abramyan’s connections to senior leaders of the Russian government, which the US intelligence community has said is once again actively interfering in the 2020 election by damaging Hunter and Joe Biden, calls into question the motivations behind the June 2019 meeting with President Trump’s main ally seeking such information on the Bidens.
Abramyan and the Russian government
Much of Ara Abramyan’s background is shrouded in secrecy. In 1989, according to multiple biographies, Abramyan was appointed to a position in the Soviet Union’s state Ministry of the Electronics Industry. After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Abramyan founded an investment company and a real estate development company, the latter of which did work on the reconstruction of the Kremlin buildings in the 1990s.
By the 2000s, Abramyan was receiving state awards directly from Vladimir Putin, who had recently risen quickly to power. In 2002, Putin bestowed upon Abramyan the Order of Friendship, which signifies “a sign of recognition for building fruitful relations between countries and strengthening Russia’s position in the international community.”
In the two decades under Putin’s rule, Abramyan has often acted as an intermediary between Russia and Armenia, his home country. In his role as the President of the Union of Armenians in Russia and the President of the World Armenian Congress, Abramyan has sat in numerous meetings between the various leaders of the two states and is often quoted in Russian state media. In 2003 he also was designated the Goodwill Ambassador to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) for the Russian state.
In 2016, it was discovered that Igor Sechin, the head of the Russian state oil conglomerate Rosneft and an insider often described as Putin’s right-hand-man, built a mansion in a prestigious neighborhood in the West of Moscow after purchasing the land from Abramyan’s son. Abramyan owns what was called “the most expensive house in Russia” across the street from Sechin and listed it for sale for $80 million in 2020. His next-door-neighbor is the former CEO of state-owned Sberbank Capital and a former senior officer in Russia’s intelligence services.
Forensic News has also reviewed documents that show that Abramyan and his wife, Natalia, own multimillion-dollar properties in California.
When Abramyan turned 60-years-old in 2017, a massive birthday party was thrown at a lavish banquet hall a few minutes from the Kremlin he helped reconstruct. At the party, the most senior leaders of the Russian government heaped praise onto the businessman.
“He is an extremely talented person,” remarked Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov. “He is a great friend and a very wise man.”
“We have been with him for a very long time,” said Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “We are not only friends with him, but also interact in the foreign policy sphere.”
Though he was unable to make it to the celebration, Putin sent Abramyan a birthday card of sorts noting in part, “over the years, you have been making a significant personal contribution to solving various social, economic and humanitarian problems, to shaping an objective, truthful image of Russia as a friendly state open to partnership. With all my heart I wish you good health, happiness, prosperity, and new successes”
Months later, in November of 2017, Putin presented Abramyan with what is considered the highest civilian honor in Russia – the Order of Merit to the Fatherland. This award is given only to those who support the Russian state in a significant capacity.
Abramyan, Giuliani, and Russia
TriGlobal’s original biography of Abramyan said that he is, “a very close Advisor to the Russian Government’s inner circle including the President and the Prime Minister.” The original biography was noted by Bloomberg in 2019 when the TriGlobal website went dark for a period of time. The site has since returned, with the descriptor of Abramyan as an advisor to the President and Prime Minister of Russia removed.
As previously mentioned, Abramyan has claimed in press reports that he has held a close relationship with Rudy Giuliani since the 1990s. After Trump was elected in 2016, Abramyan was quoted in the Armenian press saying that the election will have a positive impact on Armenia. He also claimed to have a working relationship with Joe Biden and John Kerry. On Giuliani, Abramyan hinted at a deeper business relationship that previously known, saying, “I have a very good relationship with [Trump’s] colleague, the former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani, he is the chairman of the Supervisory Board of one of my companies.”
It’s unclear to which company Abramyan was referring. Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment by Forensic News. Abramyan could not be reached.
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Giuliani’s 2018 trip to Armenia, reportedly on the invitation of Abramyan, is when the two next resurface in news reports.
Forensic News is the first to report the June 2019 meeting in New York between the two men.
Eight days before the meeting, on the National Day of Russia, then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a personal note to Abramyan stating, “further successes of Russia depend on us…Together – we will achieve high results. I wish you health, good luck in business, and all the best.”
It’s unclear whether Giuliani and Abramyan discussed the Biden’s during their June 20, 2019 meeting. However, Giuliani at the time was in the middle of his hunt for damaging information on Hunter and Joe Biden, speaking with pro-Russian Ukrainians and pressuring the Ukrainian government to open an investigation. The morning after his get-together with Abramyan, Giuliani tweeted, “New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 election and alleged Biden bribery…”
New Pres of Ukraine still silent on investigation of Ukrainian interference in 2016 election and alleged Biden bribery of Pres Poroshenko. Time for leadership and investigate both if you want to purge how Ukraine was abused by Hillary and Obama people.
— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) June 21, 2019
Intelligence officials, according to the Washington Post and subsequently confirmed by the New York Times, NBC, and other outlets, warned the White House that Giuliani was in contact with “Russian assets” in his search for proof of corruption by the Bidens. “U.S. intelligence…warned in written materials sent to the White House that Giuliani, in his drive for information about the Bidens, was communicating with Russian assets,” according to the Post. It’s unclear if Abramyan is one of the Russian assets.
The Washington Post also reported that Giuliani was picked up on intercepted communications by U.S. intelligence agencies speaking to people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine. During that trip, Giuliani met with Andriy Derkach who was later sanctioned by the U.S. government for interfering in the 2020 election, describing him as an “active Russian agent for over a decade.”
In recent days leading up to the election, material allegedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop has been released by the New York Post and other conservative outlets. Those with access to the documents, photos, and videos purportedly from the laptop claim that the device was dropped off at a computer repair store in Delaware in April 2019 but never retrieved. The owner of the repair shop claimed that he received a subpoena for the laptop from the FBI in December 2019 and later gave a copy to Giuliani. This timeline of events does not comport with the assertions by Lev Parnas that Giuliani was informed in May 2019 that strikingly similar material was already in the hands of a Ukrainian oligarch and Russian authorities.
The FBI is investigating whether the leaked Hunter Biden emails and documents are part of a foreign intelligence operation.
Southern District of New York investigators probed Giuliani’s foreign dealings in 2019 and Forensic News has been told that in recent months the investigation continued with investigators questioning witnesses.