ABC News holding Trump to Parnas tape: "Take her out. Okay? Do it."

[Snowball]

President Trump is heard angrily orders shady Ukrainian henchmen to “get rid of” Ambassador Marie Yovanovich in a bombshell new recording that could rock his impeachment defense.

Trump is captured ranting at Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas to rev up his campaign to oust the American envoy who stood in the way of the president’s scheme to bully Ukraine into launching bogus investigations.

"Get rid of her!" Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it."

The explosive tape, which was recorded at the Trump International Hotel in April 2018. was obtained exclusively by ABC News Friday.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...w2m-story.html

Giuliani Ukraine associate had checkered past even before indictment

Lev Parnas’ track record is punctuated with alleged death threats and partnerships with fraudsters.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/1...ne-past-049677

The tape that has come to light today is said to have been recorded by Igor Fruman during an April 20, 2018 dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
https://bossip.com/1832712/corleone-...e-yovanovitch/

Joe Bondy, confirmed that the tape did not come from Parnas.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/trum...mbassador.html

[Swordsmyth]

He has the right to fire and hire ambassadors.

[Snowball]

He has the right to fire and hire ambassadors.

That's the point. He's not talking about firing her.
Read the article. It was after she said he would be impeached, this was in early 2018.
Take her out, Okay? Do it.
To a "connected" guy.

[Danke]

That's the point. He's not talking about firing her.
Read the article. It was after she said he would be impeached, this was in early 2018.
Take her out, Okay? Do it.
To a crime figure.

Didn't Obama do that too?

[Cleaner44]

So are we supposed to pretend this is Trump ordering someone to be whacked?

[Swordsmyth]

That's the point. He's not talking about firing her.
Read the article. It was after she said he would be impeached, this was in early 2018.
Take her out, Okay? Do it.
To a "connected" guy.

LOL

More mind reading.
Nothing happened to her, except that she was finally "taken out" of her job as ambassador.

[dannno]

What's the problem, exactly?

Do you like her?

[Snowball]

breaking 3 minutes ago (well, 4 now)

Jim Acosta
@Acosta
· 3m
Parnas attorney, Joseph Bondy confirms to CNN he has turned over to the House Intel Committee an audio recording of Trump talking about Yovanovitch.

[Swordsmyth]

breaking 3 minutes ago (well, 4 now)

Jim Acosta
@Acosta
· 3m
Parnas attorney, Joseph Bondy confirms to CNN he has turned over to the House Intel Committee an audio recording of Trump talking about Yovanovitch.

[enhanced_deficit]

So are we supposed to pretend this is Trump ordering someone to be whacked?

All reporting suggests he meant that amabassdor be removed from her position.

Let's read news responsibly and not jump to any assumptions.
Conspiracy theories of the kind that surfaced after deaths of Enquirer official linked to 'catch n kill' stories , Bourdain had taken life of their own despite no credible proof supported by MSM reporting.

[Firestarter]

America First Action’s finance chair, Roy Bailey, is close friends with Rep. Pete Sessions and was also Sessions’ campaign chair, the super PAC would spend millions on Sessions’ failed reelection bid.
Bailey is also a partner at Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani LLC. Giuliani himself would headline a fundraiser for Sessions later in 2018.

On 9 May 2018, the same day that Parnas posted a photo to Facebook, meeting Rep. Sessions, Sessions sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for the ambassador’s removal, citing “concrete evidence from close companions that Ambassador Yovanovitch has spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current Administration”.



Parnas and Fruman were trying to export US natural gas to Ukraine for which Ambassador Yovanovitch had to be replaced “with someone more open to aiding their business interests” and replacing the leadership at Ukraine’s state gas company, Naftogaz, with allies who would give them natural gas contracts.
Starting in March 2019, The Hill’s John Solomon published a series of articles critiquing ambassador Yovanovitch, referencing the Sessions letter, with information from Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, whom Parnas and Fruman had introduced to Giuliani two months earlier.
President Trump praised Lutsenko’s claims on Fox News in April 2019. Lutsenko has recently reopened the investigation into the gas company Burisma with Hunter Biden on its board: https://campaignlegal.org/update/rea...n-trump-donors
(http://web.archive.org/web/20191012142332/https://campaignlegal.org/update/real-backstory-arrest-two-ukrainian-american-trump-donors)


Here’s the (or a) video of Donald Trump telling Lev Parnas and Fruman (who Trump claims he doesn’t know!) at a 2018 dinner to get rid of the US ambassador to the Ukraine (starting at 1:17): "Get rid of her!
Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it."
Trump also talks about his reasons for getting rid of this ambassador (starting 5:13), before the release of the previous dinner tape.



Donald Trump (like some of his associates) has denied over and over again that he knows Lev Parnas or Igor Fruman. The problem is that he has been pictured over and over and over again with Parnas (there are even videos of them together): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-together.html
(http://archive.is/LEa2A)

See Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas (second and third from left) pictured with Vice President Mike Pence (who has likewise denied knowing them), President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.


See Parnas with Ivanka and Jared Kushner.



In March and September 2018, Lev Parnas received two $22,500 wires from Florida lobbying firm Ballard Partners that has become a powerhouse in Trump’s Washington.

The questionable campaign donations began in May 2018, when $1.2 million was wired to a company controlled by Parnas — Aaron Investments 1. According to the indictment, this money came from a mortgage on Fruman´s South Florida condo. Parnas and Igor Fruman then donated $325,000 to America First Action (not named in the indictment).
The next morning, the PAC’s director of development Joseph Ahearn received an email about the donation from Bulldog Compliance. Though a note on the donation referenced Global Energy Producers (GEP), the money was listed as coming from Parnas’s company Aaron Investments. The money “never passed through the GEP account”.
For some reason America First Action, while knowing that the contribution came from Aaron Investments I LLC, falsely attributed the funds to GEP. In doing so, America First Action violated the straw donor ban: by knowingly reporting it falsely as coming from GEP.

In another one of those strange coincidence, Rudy Giuliani was also heading for Vienna.
Trump repeatedly claimed that he did not know Parnas or Fruman, despite photographs of them together:

I don’t know those gentlemen. Now it’s possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody.

See Parnas with President Donald (from Parnas’s Facebook page).


The indictment also alleges that Parnas and Fruman conspired with codefendants Correia and Kukushkin to funnel money from an unidentified "foreign national" to various unnamed politicians to get support for a new recreational marijuana business the men planned to launch in various states in the US, including Nevada: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...uliani-ukraine
(http://web.archive.org/web/20191012140605/https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/lev-parnas-igor-fruman-arrested-giuliani-ukraine)


The indictment says the “foreign national” sent Fruman $1 million in September and October 2018, and that the 4 men used money “to gain influence” with “politicians and candidates”. The business venture never went through.
From the indictment:

Foreign National-1 then arrainged for two $500,000 wires on or about September 18, 2018 and October 16, 2018 to be sent from overseas accounts to a U.S. corporate bank account controlled by FRUMAN and another individual (the “FRUMAN account”).

http://web.archive.org/web/20191012141145/https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000016d-b604-d0d8-af6d-f77cd3e20000