Report: Trump and Parnas Discussed Firing Ukraine Ambassador in 2018--At Trump's Hotel

Report: Trump and Parnas Discussed Firing Ukraine Ambassador in 2018—At Trump’s Hotel

DAN FRIEDMAN at Mother Jones

Julia Weeks/AP

https://www.motherjones.com/impeachment/2020/01/report-trump-and-parnas-discussed-firing-ukraine-ambassador-in-2018-at-trumps-hotel/

"SNIP......

It’s the corruption, stupid. According to a new report, President Donald Trump said nearly two years ago that he wanted Marie Yovanovitch, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine, removed from her post.

ABC News reported Friday that it had obtained an audio recording of an “intimate” April 2018 dinner at Trump’s Washington hotel that included, among others, the president and Lev Parnas, the since-indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani. According to the news outlet, a voice that sounds like Trump states during the recording: “Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it.” Trump said this, according to ABC, after Parnas told him that Yovanovitch was a “problem” and was “basically walking around telling everybody, ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached. Just wait.’” It’s not clear exactly who Trump was instructing to “get rid of her.”

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The ABC report further belies Trump’s never-credible claim that he does not know Parnas. It also suggests that efforts to force out Yovanovitch were underway more than a year before her eventual removal from her post and before Zelensky’s May 2019 election. 

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The dinner at which Trump reportedly asked for Yovanovitch’s removal came 18 days before the recorded date of a $325,000 donation that Parnas and his partner, Igor Fruman, gave to a pro-Trump SuperPAC, America First Action. They made the contribution through a Delaware shell company, a step that drew federal scrutiny and resulted in the October 2019 indictment of Parnas and Fruman on campaign finance violations.

......SNIP"