Friday, January 24, 2020

"Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Do it." | On the recording, it appears the two Giuliani associates are telling Trump that U.S. ambassador Yovanovitch has been bad-mouthing him, which leads directly to the apparent remarks by Trump. The recording was made by Fruman according to sources familiar with the tape.

"Get rid of her!" is what the voice that appears to be President Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it."
On the recording, it appears the two Giuliani associates are telling President Trump that the U.S. ambassador has been bad-mouthing him, which leads directly to the apparent remarks by the President. The recording was made by Fruman according to sources familiar with the tape.
 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/recording-appears-capture-trump-private-dinner-ukraine-ambassador/story?id=68506437&id=68506437

And there it is, the consummation of a a criminal conspiracy currently under federal indictment in the Southern District of New York, personally directed by Donald Trump: an exchange of public announcements by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General (Sergiy Lutsenko) which would help rig the 2020 US election for Trump in exchange for firing the US Ambassador to Ukraine (Maria Yovanovich).
This is a bit confusing, because this conspiracy predates Trump's direct extortion of President Zelensky. Here is a summary:
"They sought political influence not only to advance their own financial interests, but to advance the political interests of at least one foreign official ⁠— a Ukrainian government official [Lutsenko] who sought the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine," Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a Thursday news conference.
  • Recently revealed text messages between Parnas and Lutsenko yielded the most conclusive evidence yet that Lutsenko was specifically offering to fabricate claims about the Bidens in exchange for Yovanovich's termination.
The messages, written in Russian, show Lutsenko urging Parnas to force out Yovanovitch in exchange for cooperation regarding Biden. At one point, Lutsenko suggests he won’t make any helpful public statements unless “madam” is removed.
“It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam — you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B,” Lutsenko wrote to Parnas in a March 22 message on WhatsApp.
  • As WSJ reported in October, and which is now supported by a smoking gun audio recording, Yovanovitch's removal was personally ordered by Donald Trump, consummating the conspiracy.
  • This scheme fell apart when Vlodimir Zelenskiy was elected President running on an anti-corruption platfrom, and terminated Lutsenko, who then became the subject of investigation for abuse of power.
  • In the infamous phone call, Trump specifically berated Zelenskiy for Lutsenko's termination:
“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky, in what people familiar with the conversation said was a reference to Mr. Lutsenko.
“A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down,” Mr. Trump said, later adding that Mr. Lutsenko “was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor.”
In a telephone conversation that has set off a political crisis for Mr. Trump, he told Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, that she was “bad news.”
“She’s going to go through some things,” he added.
  • We learned last week that the "things" Yovanovich was going through included extra-legal surveillance by Parnas or his associates, and discussion of paying entities within Ukraine to coerce, and potentially commit violence against, Yovanovich.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump was personally aware of everything that was going on, as was asserted in a letter revealed last week, from Rudy Giuliani to Vlodomir Zelensky when all of this was beginning, that everything they were doing was with the explicit "knowledge and consent" of Donald Trump.  


Also, Fruman and Parnas, through "Global Energy Partners" made their $325,000 donation to America First Action on 5/17/18, just days after this meeting
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave2.php?cmte=C00637512&cycle=2018

America First Action held an event on April 30, 2018 as documented here
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/trump-hotel-events/

To add to this - Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, associates of the President's personal attorney, have been arrested and charged by the Justice Department for violating campaign finance laws. Giuliani's associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were engaged in a scheme to funnel foreign money into American political campaigns so they could buy influence in the U.S.[1]
Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, David Correia, and Andrey Kukushkin, the defendants, conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns, and the candidates' governments. The defendants concealed the scheme from candidates, campaigns, federal regulators, and the public by entering into secret agreements, laundering foreign money through bank accounts in the names of limited liability corporations, and through the use of straw donors (also known as "conduits" or "straw contributors") who purported to make legal campaign contributions in their own names, rather than in the name of the true source of the funds.

1) United States District Court Southern District of New York - United States of America v. Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, David Correia, and Andrey Kukushkin





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