NPR on the Parnas hotel room notepad scribbles:

The records provided by Parnas, who has been indicted in New York for alleged campaign finance violations, add to the evidence already released documenting Giuliani’s efforts to get the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to publicly announce an investigation related to former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who had ties to a Ukrainian energy company.

It’s not that there’s anything new in that, it’s just that I keep wanting to underline how DERANGED it is. Trump’s personal lawyer is working with random guy Lev Parnas to try to force another head of state to damage one of Trump’s political competitors. Trump might as well be sending Barron and a couple of Barron’s classmates to South Korea to try to get that government to sabotage Elizabeth Warren – it would make just as much sense. Then again that would omit the extra poignancy in the fact that Giuliani was once a famous prosecutor in the famous SDNY.

But there is new news on this revolting Robert Hyde character.

But it’s a string of WhatsApp messages from late March 2019 taken from Parnas’ phone that is drawing the most scrutiny. In those texts, Parnas and an associate named Robert F. Hyde, a retired Marine who is running for Congress as a Republican in Connecticut, criticize Yovanovitch, who was still a U.S. ambassador at the time.

She was still an ambassador at that time because Trump hadn’t yet fired her for his own evil self-dealing reasons.

“Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch. I’ll get right in that,” Hyde wrote in an encrypted message to Parnas. He added, “She under heavy protection outside Kiev.”

People working for Trump’s personal lawyer are conspiring to harm a US ambassador, presumably because she’s not corrupt and thus won’t help them with their corrupt Cunning Plan.

The messages also seem to indicate that Hyde might have been involved in monitoring Yovanovitch and her movements.

“They are moving her tomorrow,” Hyde later wrote, quickly followed by, “The guys over they asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them.”

Hyde said Yovanovitch had turned off her phone and computer, and that his associates in Ukraine would give updates on the ambassador’s movements. He added, “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price… Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money … what I was told.”

These random crooks are monitoring an ambassador’s phone and computer. On behalf of the president of the US. Along with being criminal it’s just so filthy.

Two days later, on March 29, Hyde wrote, “It’s confirmed we have a person inside.”

But hey, he was only joking, folks!

In a a flurry of comments Wednesday, Hyde said he has never been to Kyiv and that the highlighted exchange was all in fun and had been misconstrued.

Uh huh. Just jokes.

So he’s illiterate as well as criminal and dangerous.

I do not like these people.