REVEALED: GOP lawmaker was worried CIA was listening in on his 'back-channel' dealings with Venezuela's Maduro
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX). U.S. Air Force photo by Jennifer Thibault

According to a tell-all book coming from the son of Lev Parnas, a GOP lawmaker from Texas who was trying to help Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro safely come to the U.S. fretted afterward that the CIA might have been listening in on his phone call.


Speaking with Politico, the son of Parnas, Aaron, said that he was privy to multiple conversations between his father and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and they spoke freely when he was in the room -- including when they were speaking with Donald Trump.

In his book "Trust First," he recalled a conversation former Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) had with Maduro that ended with the Republican saying he might have to get rid of his phone.

According to the George Washington University Law School graduate, he was "sitting in on a phone call between Republican Congressman Pete Sessions — who is running for reelection [in a different district in] Texas — and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as they attempted, from a private room on the second floor of BLT Prime, to negotiate a back-channel deal for Maduro to leave Venezuela and travel to the U.S. peacefully."

"In a nod to the group’s concerns about its unofficial talks being exposed, Parnas describes Sessions as being so worried about the CIA possibly listening in on the call that the Texas lawmaker said he’d be discarding his phone afterward," the report states.

“At some point, Congressman Sessions agreed to visit Venezuela in an unofficial capacity with Rudy Giuliani accompanying him,” Parnas wrote, with Politico adding that Sessions "was later referred to as 'Congressman-1' in the indictment of Lev Parnas and his business associate Igor Fruman, who allegedly made illegal campaign contributions to Sessions. Sessions has denied knowing about the scheme."

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