Rudy Pal Igor Fruman Taped Trump Trying to Fire Ukraine Ambassador: Lawyer
 

Rudy Pal Igor Fruman Taped Trump Trying to Fire Ukraine Ambassador: Lawyer
By: Besty Swan - Political Reporter for The Daily Beast - 01-24-20
Re: https://www.thedailybeast.com/rudy-p...assador-lawyer

The tape may contradict Trump’s claim that he does not know the two Giuliani associates who worked to have the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine be removed.

Photo link: https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/...n-tease_ejita0

A recently-indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani taped President Donald Trump calling for the firing of Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, according to the lawyer for a second Giuliani associate.

Joseph Bondy, a lawyer for Florida businessman Lev Parnas, told The Daily Beast that the recording was made by former partner Igor Fruman. Both men were arrested in October and charged with campaign finance violations.

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Adam Schiff Stands Up and Speaks the Truth at Mitch McConnell’s Upside-Down Stalinist Show Trial
By: Michael Tomasky - Correspondent
Re: https://www.thedailybeast.com/adam-s...ticles&via=rss

ABC News reported Friday morning that they reviewed audio of a dinner attended by Trump, Parnas, Fruman, and others. A voice that appears to be the president’s tells the group that he wanted to “get rid of” Yovanovitch, per ABC, an apparent contradiction to Trump’s claim that he does not know Parnas.

“Last year, before he was arrested, Mr. Parnas personally heard a recording of his April 30, 2018 dinner with the President and others, made by Mr. Fruman, at which the subject of Ambassador Yovanovitch was discussed,” Bondy said. “We have hoped that, to the extent this recording still existed, it would be released to Congress for use in the impeachment trial.”

A lawyer for Fruman was not at liberty to discuss the matter. ABC News review matches the description Bondy gave The Daily Beast. Unnamed sources told the network that Fruman made the recording, which The Daily Beast has not reviewed.

Parnas has previously described a dinner at Trump Hotel with supporters of the president in April of 2018 that he and Fruman attended. He said that he raised concerns about Yovanovitch to Trump, and that the president then turned to an aide and told him she should be fired. At the time, Yovanovitch was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Giuliani, Fruman, and Parnas were trying to have her fired.

Trump eventually recalled Yovanovitch in May of 2019. Months later, he pressured Ukraine’s president to announce investigations of a company linked to the family of former Vice President Joe Biden. At the same time, Trump withheld military aid that Congress had appropriated for Ukraine. And his team refused to arrange a White House visit for Ukraine’s president, even though they had formally invited him. That pressure campaign is the focus of Democrats’ efforts to have Trump removed from the White House. His trial is currently underway in the Senate.

Adam Schiff’s closing remarks Thursday night will go down in history. He laid out, with a plain-spoken eloquence, everything that’s at stake here. He’s been impressive the whole way through—I was especially struck on day two by the way he batted down one particular defense of Donald Trump that’s been driving me nuts, the fact that Volodymyr Zelensky said he never felt any pressure from Trump. Well, duh, Schiff said—like the president of a small country wants to antagonize the president of the United States?

But day three, in closing, he was even better. Watch it if you haven’t. He looked to his left—right at Senate Republicans—as he said: “Do we really have any doubt about the facts here? Does anybody really question whether the president is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument—Donald Trump would never do such a thing—because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did.”