Just a quick post to call your attention to a new data drop from Lev Parnas’ seized devices:
The new documents include screenshots of undated text messages that appear to show Robert Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut, messaging with a foreign number from Belgium, which appear to describe efforts to surveil Yovanovitch. Hyde appeared to share the screenshots with Parnas, which is how they wound up on his phone that he turned over to House investigators.
The Belgian country-code number sends Hyde a screenshot of an official photo of Yovanovitch. The Belgium number, whose identity is not known, writes "My contacts are checking," adding, "I will give you the address next week."
[…] In another series of texts, the Belgian number tells Hyde at 2:05 p.m., "Nothing has changed she is still not moving they check today again," shortly adding, "It's confirmed we have a person inside."
"She had visitors," the Belgian number texted in another exchange.
The texts weren’t exchanged directly with Parnas; the sender’s identity isn’t currently known. The article says that Hyde sent the screen shots to Parnas, which is why they were on Parnas’ phone, but Parnas claims not to know who Hyde was texting with:
Parnas’ attorney Joseph Bondy denied that Hyde had been communicating with his client in this exchange.
“I have no idea whom Mr. Hyde is communicating with,” Bondy told Courthouse News. “Ask him, perhaps?”
Pressed for further clarification, Bondy said bluntly: “Not Lev.”
Again, we don’t know whether the threats to Amb. Yovanovitch were real, but they generated more than just drunken texts from Hyde to Parnas.
The new documents are posted here.
UPDATE: NBC reports the sender is a trump supporter from Belgium, Anthony de Caluwe. He denies via email any involvement with Hyde, saying he’d met him but was told to stay away from him. However:
But newly released text messages by House Democrats tell a different story. The texts include screenshots of WhatsApp messages about Yovanovitch’s whereabouts that appear to have been sent to Hyde, who then forwarded those screenshots to Parnas.
The messages sent to Hyde came from a WhatsApp user with a profile photograph of de Caluwe. They came from a Belgian phone number, and while the final digits of the number are redacted in the screenshots released by the House, the first five digits exactly match a Belgian phone number for de Caluwe listed on one of his online profiles.
[…] The screenshots newly released by the House appear to corroborate Hyde’s claim that he'd copied and pasted information to Parnas that he'd received from de Caluwe. Initially, Hyde apparently forwarded to Parnas the screenshots of his communications with de Caluwe. In subsequent texts to Parnas, he conveyed much of the same purported information about Yovanovitch’s whereabouts once again.
Like the TPM headline says, “It Just Got Weirder, Folks. A Lot Weirder.”