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Parnas and Fruman plead not guilty in New York
Summary
A retrospective on 23 October 2019, when two Giuliani associates denied campaign finance charges linked to Ukraine, a day after testimony from the acting US ambassador in Kyiv.
What did a New York courtroom add to the Ukraine affair on 23 October 2019? Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two associates of Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of US President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty at a hearing in New York City.
They were charged with funnelling $350,000 in illegal donations to a pro-Trump political committee, and a further $20,000 to former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. The charges say they acted on behalf of at least one Ukrainian government official. As reported at the time, both men had helped Giuliani in a search in Ukraine for damaging information on Trump's political opponents.
The testimony a day earlier
The hearing followed congressional testimony on 22 October 2019 from 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, until Kyiv publicly declared that investigations would be launched. These concerned Burisma Holdings, a company that had hired Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and Ukraine's alleged involvement in the 2016 US presidential election.
What the wider affair involved
Later accounts described the episode as an attempt by Trump to press Ukraine into investigating his rival Joe Biden. They said he blocked a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package and that contacts between the White House and Kyiv culminated in a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019.
On 23 October 2019 the court appearance was the criminal-law strand of the story, running alongside the congressional inquiry.
