Longtime regulars at this shebeen may have noted a new phenomenon hereabouts. It used to be that, if something happened during the day concerning something already posted here, we'd just toss an UPDATE at the bottom of the original post and call it a day. However, since we clearly are going to be clinging to the sides of the kayak in a fast-moving river of radioactive news for the foreseeable future, we've taken to making what would have been UPDATES in normal times into their own posts. Such is the case here with the two dudes with whom Rudy Giuliani was doing business.

And, by the way, have you ever seen any two guys who look more like HENCHMEN than these two jamokes?

When we left the story this morning, the two of them had been busted on campaign finance violations related to the work they'd allegedly done for Giuliani in Ukraine regarding the ratfcking of the Biden campaign on behalf of Donald Trump. It turns out that these two HENCHMEN had their fingers in a lot of pies, and that they were in and around Camp Runamuck as recently as last week, and that they were imminently preparing to skip town. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, Giuliani had lunch with his two HENCHMEN at the Trump International Hotel just before they showed up at Dulles International Airport with one-way airplane tickets. They got busted at the airport.

The mayor has had quite a day. Tasos Katopodis Getty Images

What else? Oh, yeah, according to the indictment filed against the HENCHMEN, they funneled money from an unnamed Russian businessman to various political candidates because they wanted to get into the burgeoning weed market here in the United States. And the HENCHMEN got around, my friends. And so did their HENCHMONEY. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, some of the HENCHMONEY got into the statewide campaigns of both Adam Paul Laxalt and Wes Duncan, apparently in the hopes of buying into the Nevada weed economy. We already mentioned that the HENCHMONEY got to someone named in the indictment as "Congressman 1"—rumored to be Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas—in the hopes of 86-ing the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich.

Is there anything else? Oh, right. The New York Daily News reported that Lev Parnas, one of the HENCHMEN, contributed $2,700 in HENCHMONEY to the reelection campaign of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who is only the Republican leader in the House of Representatives.

You may be asking yourself at this point, how covert was this operation? (You may also be asking yourself, why did my great-grandparents flee the Cossacks for this mess, but that's a call you have to make on your own.) The answer to that is, well, not very. A Republican lawyer named Trevor Potter, who specializes in campaign finance law, sounded the alarm on the two HENCHMEN last summer, because he noticed that some possible HENCHMONEY was flowing into the Trump campaign's Super PAC. From the Campaign Legal Center, which is Potter's shop.

In July 2018, CLC uncovered how these two men had laundered a six-figure contribution to President Trump’s super PAC through a shell corporation, and filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The DOJ indictment says Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas had pushed for the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and introduced Giuliani to current and former Ukrainian prosecutors to discuss an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter. As the indictment states, those efforts “were conducted, at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.”

CLC uncovered these secret donations and flagged them for the authorities last summer. We are pleased that federal law enforcement has conducted an investigation into these campaign finance crimes and made these two arrests. The public is now learning just how dangerous dark money can be in U.S. elections, including the potential for illegal foreign funds, which DOJ says were used here. The fact that these two individuals were working with Giuliani and Ukrainian government officials to alter U.S. policy in that country will obviously be relevant to the impeachment investigation.

Is there anything more? Well, there's Bill Barr. Pete Williams of NBC News reported that Barr has known about the HENCHMEN and their HENCHMONEY ever since shortly after Barr took office last February. This is your democracy on drugs.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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