An audio recording seemed to capture the president of the United States, Donald Trump, asking in 2018 for the dismissal of the then US ambassador to Ukraine, a key figure in the series of events that promoted the political judgment to the president, he said Friday ABC News.
The recording features a voice that sounds like Trump’s speaking at a small dinner in April 2018 with guests like Lev Parnas, a former member of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, reported ABC, citing sources familiar with the recording. “Get rid of her!” Says the voice, according to ABC. Take it out tomorrow. I do not care. Throw it out. In agreement? Do it, “is heard in the audio.
If the recording is authentic, it would reinforce the Democrats’ argument that Trump associates spent almost a year trying to expel the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, because they saw it as an obstacle in their efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival for the presidential elections in November this year.
Trump has said he had the right to fire Yovanovitch, something he did in May 2019. This Friday he told Fox news that “he was not a fan” of Yovanovitch. And Parnas had talked about this conversation in media interviews last week.
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Parnas found a digital recording of the comments after ABC published his article this Friday, his lawyer Joseph Bondy said, and sent it to the House Intelligence Committee, which continues to investigate Trump’s behavior.
“I was especially pleased to see that everything Mr. Parnas has been saying about that event was true,” Bondy said, referring to dinner on April 30, 2018. “It’s another example of the version of events that Parnas corroborated. with evidence in the form of recordings, emails and text messages. “
Parnas, a Florida businessman, has been providing evidence to Democrats who are now pushing for Trump’s expulsion in his Senate political trial. He played a key role in Giuliani’s effort to dig up Biden in Ukraine for Trump. He is now under indictment for campaign financing violations in a separate criminal case.
The White House’s response to the history of ABC News He did not deny that Trump attended dinner or that the president used to say those words. “All the presidents of our history have had the right to place the people who support their agenda and their policies within their Administration,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
No one has suggested that Trump did not have the authority to replace Yovanovich, the problem is why he did it and why he has been lying about his relationship with Parnas. Last week, Trump said, “I don’t know him at all. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know where it comes from, I don’t know anything about him. I can only tell you that this is a big hoax.”
ABC News did not say how it gained access to the recording, which appears to have been made by Fruman, a long-time business partner of Parnas. He used a phone “placed on a table with the audio still recording the conversation,” the report said. On Friday afternoon, Parnas defense attorney Joseph Bondy confirmed to the Daily Beast that Parnas was aware of the tape’s existence and said Fruman did it. “Last year, before being arrested, Parnas personally listened to a recording of his dinner on April 30, 2018 with the president and others, made by Fruman, in which the subject of Ambassador Yovanovitch was discussed,” Bondy said.
Trump seems almost certain that he will be acquitted by the 100-member Senate, where there are 53 Republicans and where a two-thirds majority of those present are needed to convict him and remove him from office. But the political impact of the trial remains uncertain.
On Friday, the president unleashed a series of Twitter attacks against the Democrats while prosecutors of the political trial were preparing for their last day of opening arguments, accusing them of spreading “lies, fraud and deception.” The Democrats claimed that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden to “cheat” and win reelection, that he covered it up, and that if he is not dismissed, he will do it again.
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