Recording of Trump discussing Ukraine with donors released
WASHINGTON - For more than an hour one evening in 2018, President Donald Trump sat around a dinner table in a private suite in his Washington hotel with a group of donors, including two men at the center of the impeachment inquiry, talking about golf, trade, politics - and removing the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
The conversation, captured on a recording made public Saturday, contradicted Trump’s repeated statements that he does not know the two men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who went on to work with the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to carry out a pressure campaign on Ukraine.
The recording - a video shot on Fruman’s phone during the dinner in April 2018 - largely confirmed Parnas’ account of having raised with Trump criticisms of the ambassador to Kyiv at the time, Marie Yovanovitch, and the president’s immediate order that Yovanovitch be removed from the post.
“Get rid of her,” Trump can be heard responding.
The recording was made public by Parnas’ lawyer, Joseph Bondy, hours after the president’s lawyers began presenting their defense in the impeachment trial and as Democrats looked for leverage to persuade Republicans to support their calls to expand the inquiry by introducing additional evidence and by calling new witnesses.
Bondy said it was being released in “an effort to provide clarity to the American people and the Senate as to the need to conduct a fair trial, with witnesses and evidence.”
In the recording, Parnas, who is the more talkative of the two, broached an energy deal the two were pursuing in Ukraine and then went on to discuss several themes that later became central to the pressure campaign. He claimed that Yovanovitch, whose name he did not cite, had been disparaging Trump. He said that the Ukrainians “were supporting the Clintons all these years.” He even mentioned in passing the family of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The recording does not appear to introduce substantive new information about the effort to oust Yovanovitch. But it does seem to shed light on the origins of Trump’s interest in the issue and to foreshadow his administration’s withholding of military assistance from the country as part of the pressure campaign. It hints at the motivations of Parnas and Fruman, who had come to believe that Yovanovitch was opposed to their business plans in Ukraine, where they had tried to break into the natural gas market, according to associates of the two men, both of whom are Soviet-born U.S. citizens.
And it provides a glimpse of something rarely seen: top-tier political donors getting a chance in an intimate setting to share their views with the president and press their agendas with him.
During the dinner, Trump lashed out at the European Union for trying to “screw” the United States, assailed the World Trade Organization as a “weapon” intended to harm America and lamented the “globalists” around him who did not care if manufacturing plants shuttered.
Democrats are seeking Trump’s removal from office on the grounds that he abused his power by pressing Ukraine to investigate targets of the president, including Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Parnas and Fruman worked closely with Giuliani in seeking information and making contacts in Ukraine in support of the effort, starting months after the April 2018 dinner.
For most of the recording, the camera is pointed at the ceiling but the audio is clear. Early in the recording, Trump can be seen as he enters the private room at the Trump International Hotel in Washington on April 30, 2018.
In the full recording released Saturday, Parnas can be heard telling Trump that he and Fruman “are in the process of purchasing an energy company in Ukraine right now.”
Trump responds, “How’s Ukraine doing?” then quickly adds, “Don’t answer,” prompting laughter in the room.
After some conversation about Ukraine’s war with its hostile neighbor, Russia, and its efforts to establish energy security, Trump asked, “How long would they last in a fight with Russia?”
“I don’t think very long,” Parnas responded. “Without us, not very long,” adding “they feel they’re going to be OK if you support them.”
Parnas continued by saying that “the biggest problem is corruption there,” and later added Yovanovitch, although not by name, to a list of issues Trump should address in Ukraine.
“The biggest problem there, I think, where we, where you, need to start is we got to get rid of the ambassador,” he said. “She’s basically walking around telling everybody, ‘Wait, he’s going to get impeached, just wait.’?”
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: