Thursday, October 10, 2019
"To a prosecutor's eye,
this really looks increasingly like one big scheme, overseen by Trump and
Giuliani, to obtain illegal assistance from Ukraine in the 2020 election."
Federal prosecutors on
Thursday charged two associates of President Donald Trump's personal attorney
Rudy Giuliani with a sprawling scheme to oust the former U.S. Ambassador to
Ukraine by funneling foreign money into the campaign coffers of Trump and an
unnamed congressman believed
to be former Republican Rep. Pete Sessions.
"These allegations are
not about some technicality, a civil violation, or some error on a form. This
investigation is about corrupt behavior, deliberate lawbreaking," William
Sweeney, assistant director in charge at the FBI's New York field office, said
Thursday during a press conference detailing campaign finance charges against
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.
The two men were arrested
Wednesday evening at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. as they
were waiting to board a one-way overseas flight.
Parnas and Fruman, both
witnesses in House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Trump, had lunch with Giuliani
at the Trump International Hotel in Washington hours before they were arrested
Wednesday, according
to the Wall Street Journal.
CNN reported that
"prosecutors were not intending to unseal the indictment against the
Giuliani associates" on Thursday, but "their hand was forced by an
attempt by Fruman and Parnas to leave the country."
Geoffrey Berman, U.S. Attorney
for the Southern District of New York, said during Thursday's press conference
that Fruman and Parnas "broke the law to gain political influence while
avoiding disclosure of who was actually making the donations and where the
money was coming from."
"They sought political
influence not only to advance their own financial interests," said Berman,
"but to advance the political interests of at least one foreign official,
a Ukrainian government official who sought the dismissal of the U.S. Ambassador
to Ukraine [Marie Louise Yovanovitch]."
The 21-page
indictment (pdf) unsealed Thursday alleges that Parnas and Fruman
"met with Congressman-1 and sought Congressman-1's assistance in causing
the U.S. government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to
Ukraine."
HuffPost reported that
"Congressman-1 is former Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who sent a letter
to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking for Marie Yovanovitch to be removed as
U.S. ambassador to Ukraine" following his meeting with Parnas and Fruman
in May of 2018.
That same month, the two men
also made a $325,000 donation to a pro-Trump super PAC through Global Energy
Producers LLC, which prosecutors said is a shell corporation that claimed to be
involved in the liquified natural gas industry.
Trump personally ordered
Yovanovitch removed from her post in May of 2019, according
to the Wall Street Journal, following complaints from Giuliani
and others that she was undermining the U.S. president and "obstructing
efforts to persuade Kyiv to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden."
Harry Litman, a former U.S.
attorney and current Washington Post columnist, tweeted that "to
a prosecutor's eye, this really looks increasingly like one big scheme,
overseen by Trump and Giuliani, to obtain illegal assistance from Ukraine in
the 2020 election."
House Democrats subpoenaed
Parnas and Fruman on Thursday as part of the impeachment inquiry into Trump.
Former Trump attorney John
Dowd, who is now representing Parnas and Fruman, signaled in a letter to
House investigators last week that his clients will not cooperate with
Democrats' probe.
Paul S. Ryan, vice president
for policy and litigation at watchdog group Common Cause, said in a statement
that the charges against Parnas and Fruman "paint a troubling picture of
the free flow of foreign money into our elections due to insufficient
safeguards and lax enforcement."
"Today's indictments,
though, likely represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of foreign
meddling in general but also by Parnas and Fruman," said Ryan. "Both
men were also heavily involved in the efforts by the White House and President
Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to pressure the Ukrainian government to
investigate unsubstantiated allegations against Trump's political rival Joe Biden."
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