Face of Nation : That’s where Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, huddled Wednesday with two foreign contacts who had been central to a campaign urging Ukrainian authorities to open an investigation into President Donald Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden.
By dinner time, Giuliani’s Ukrainian lunch partners, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were placed under arrest by FBI agents at Dulles International Airport, as they clutched one-way tickets to Frankfurt, Germany.
What has since spilled from federal authorities and court documents are details of a tangled criminal inquiry highlighting the efforts of Parnas and Fruman to funnel huge caches of foreign money to U.S. political campaigns – a troubling narrative that now intersects with Congress’ fast-moving inquiry into the impeachment of the president.
While neither the president nor Giuliani were named in the new campaign finance case Thursday, the four-count indictment was unsealed as three House committees had scheduled depositions this week with Parnas and Fruman to learn how they may fit – if at all – in Trump’s personal push this summer for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter.
Trump late Thursday denied any involvement with the two men, brushing aside photographs posted on social media last year showing both men with Donald Trump Jr., and Parnas with the president, “describing an “incredible dinner and even better conversation.” “Now, it’s possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody,” Trump said. “I don’t’ know about them. I don’t know what they do. … Maybe they were clients of Rudy. You have to ask Rudy. I just don’t know.”
Giuliani declined to comment, but his association with Parnas and Fruman has brought new potential trouble to the doorstep of the White House, as Trump already is battling the greatest threat to his presidency in the form of the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry.
Even as Parnas and Fruman were drawing the scrutiny of Congress for arranging a January meeting in New York between Giuliani and Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, as part of the campaign to launch an investigation into the Bidens, federal prosecutors in New York were taking aim at the pair for their suspicious movement of money to political campaigns in the U.S.
According to court documents unsealed Thursday, the dual interests of the Giuliani associates sometimes overlapped. Among the beneficiaries of their largess, prosecutors allege, was a U.S. congressman who received $5,400 last year from the pair, who also pledged to raise $20,000 for the lawmaker as they sought to enlist him in an effort remove Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
In his July 25 call to Zelensky, Trump makes an apparent disparaging reference to Yovanovitch, suggesting that she was ultimately recalled for criticizing the president. During the same call, he urged the Ukrainian president to work with Giuliani and U.S. Attorney General William Barr to assist in the investigation of the Bidens. The congressman who received the political donations was not named in court documents, but a person familiar with the matter identified the lawmaker as former Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas.
Sessions wrote Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last year, urging the ouster of Yovanovitch, who was recalled in May. Parnas and Fruman, however, made their biggest political splash last year when their company, Global Energy Producers, was credited with giving $325,000 to the committee that supports Trump’s re-election, America First Action SuperPac.
The campaign contribution sparked a complaint to the Federal Election Commission–and at least two lawsuits – because of questions about the source of the money. Citing the contribution Thursday, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who announced the campaign finance charges, characterized the suspicious donation as one of the largest that the committee had received.
America First acknowledged on Thursday receiving the donation, adding that the committee also was aware of the FEC complaint. “Accordingly, America First Action placed that contribution in a segregated bank account, it has not been used for any purpose and the funds will remain in this segregated account until these matters are resolved,” the committee said in a statement.
