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Two Giuliani associates plead not guilty in New York
Summary
A retrospective on the day Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman answered campaign-finance charges, one day after the acting US ambassador to Ukraine testified to Congress.
What did the Ukraine affair look like on 23 October 2019, a day after a senior diplomat's testimony to Congress? In a New York City hearing, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two associates of Rudy Giuliani, pleaded not guilty to criminal charges.
Giuliani was personal lawyer to US President Donald Trump. Parnas and Fruman had aided him in a search in Ukraine for damaging information on the president's political opponents. Prosecutors charged that they funneled $350,000 in illegal donations to a pro-Trump political committee. They were also charged over another $20,000 given to former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. The charges said they acted on behalf of at least one Ukrainian government official.
The testimony the day before
The hearing followed testimony on 22 October 2019 by William B. Taylor Jr., the acting US ambassador to Ukraine. He told Congress he had been informed that Trump would withhold military aid to Ukraine to help his reelection chances. According to that account, the aid would stay blocked until Ukraine publicly declared that it would open investigations. One concerned Burisma Holdings, a company that had hired Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden. The other concerned Ukraine's alleged involvement in the 2016 US presidential election.
Two tracks, one affair
The two events ran on separate tracks. One was an impeachment inquiry in Congress; the other was a criminal case in New York. Both concerned the same wider scandal over efforts to press Ukraine to investigate Trump's rivals.
Later accounts describe the affair as arising from Trump's attempts to coerce Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden. They say it culminated in a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019, and that Trump blocked a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package.
