'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired

Authored by abcnews.go.com and submitted by Austin63867
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'Take her out': Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired

WATCH: Lev Parnas, a close associate of President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is claiming Trump was directly involved in the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two former business associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.

The recording appears to contradict statements by Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump’s impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.

"Get rid of her!" is what the voice that appears to be Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."

File photo of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifying before the House Intelligence Committee in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Nov. 15, 2019, in Washington.

On the recording, it appears the two Giuliani associates are telling Trump that the U.S. ambassador has been bad-mouthing him, which leads directly to the apparent remarks by the president. The recording was made by Fruman, according to sources familiar with the tape.

"Every president in our history has had the right to place people who support his agenda and his policies within his Administration," White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said.

During the conversation, several of the participants can be heard laughing with the president. At another point, the recording appears to capture Trump praising his new choice of secretary of state, saying emphatically: "[Mike] Pompeo is the best." But the most striking moment comes when Parnas and the president discuss the dismissal of his ambassador to Ukraine.

Parnas appears to say: "The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She's still left over from the Clinton administration," Parnas can be heard telling Trump. "She's basically walking around telling everybody 'Wait, he's gonna get impeached, just wait." (Yovanovitch actually had served in the State Department since the Reagan administration.)

It was not until a year later that Yovanovitch was recalled from her position -- in April 2019. She said the decision was based on "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives" that she was disloyal to Trump.

House investigators have been attempting to document – in part with text messages supplied by Parnas -- an almost year-long effort on the part of Parnas and Giuliani to get Yovanovitch removed from her post. At times, the messages made public by the House Intelligence Committee show Giuliani referencing his repeated efforts to have Yovanovitch recalled from Kyiv, a push that was initially unsuccessful.

"Boy I'm so powerful I can intimidate the entire Ukrainian government," Giuliani messaged Parnas in May 2019. "Please don't tell anyone I can't get the crooked Ambassador fired or I did three times and she's still there."

The identities of others participating in the recorded conversation are unclear. During an early portion of the recording where video can be seen, Donald Trump Jr. appears on the recording posing for pictures with others. Sources say they were attending a larger event happening at the hotel that night for a super PAC that supports the president.

Another clip seen on the recording, according to the sources, is of individuals entering what appears to be a suite at the Trump Hotel for the intimate dinner. The phone that was recording the Trump conversation appears to be placed down on a table with the audio still recording the conversation between the commander-in-chief and other guests, according to the sources. The image of the president does not appear on the video reviewed by ABC News.

In a recent interview with MSNBC, Parnas publicly recounted his memories of the scene at the dinner and said that Trump turned to John [DeStefano], who was his deputy chief of staff at the time, and said "Fire her," he claimed. Sources familiar with the closed-door meeting corroborate that DeStefano was in attendance.

"We all, there was a silence in the room. He responded to him, said Mr. President, we can't do that right now because [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo hasn't been confirmed yet, that Pompeo is not confirmed yet and we don't have -- this is when [former Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson was gone, but Pompeo was confirmed, so they go, wait until -- so several conversations he mentioned it again."

However, Pompeo had been confirmed and privately sworn in days earlier.

A copy of the recording is now in the custody of federal prosecutors in New York's Southern District, who declined to comment to ABC News.

Trump’s supporters have maintained that no evidence has been put forward directly linking Trump to any of the alleged impeachable actions. And Trump has maintained that removing Yovanovitch was within his right.

Trump has distanced himself from Parnas, who is under federal indictment in New York in a campaign finance case, and the president’s supporters have questioned his credibility and motives.

Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, exits after a bail hearing at the Manhattan Federal Court in New York, Dec. 17, 2019.

"I don't know him," the president said just last week when asked about Parnas. "I don't know Parnas other than I guess I had pictures taken, which I do with thousands of people, including people today that I didn't meet. But I just met him. I don't know him at all. Don't know what he's about, don't know where he comes from, know nothing about him. I can only tell you this thing is a big hoax."

As ABC News previously reported, Parnas, who cooperated with the House impeachment probe of Trump, began providing materials that were in his custody to congressional investigators late last year.

Just last week, Parnas' attorney transferred more materials after a series of rulings from the judge in his criminal case, granting him permission to share records obtained by the government with House impeachment investigators to comply with a subpoena, including documents seized from Parnas’ home and the complete extraction of Parnas’ iPhone 11 and Samsung phone, seized from him upon his arrest in October 2019.

Joseph A. Bondy, Parnas' attorney, tweeted at the time that the materials were brought to House investigators "despite every stumbling block placed in our path" since his client's arrest.

The records, which were mostly WhatsApp messages, also included 59 pages of emails and handwritten letters that appear to describe Giuliani's attempts to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and an effort to remove Yovanovitch from her post.

One email exchange appears to suggest Parnas and his associates had Yovanovitch "under physical surveillance in Kyiv," according to the committee’s cover letter.

During her congressional testimony, Yovanovitch said she received a call from the State Department that "there were concerns about my security."

Giuliani is a subject of the probe being led by the New York prosecutors, sources said. Parnas' cohort, Fruman was also arrested at the same time and faces similar charges though he is not cooperating with the congressional investigations.

Parnas and Fruman were indicted by the Southern District of New York on charges including conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud, false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsification of records as part of an alleged scheme to circumvent federal campaign finance laws against straw donations and foreign contributions. Both have pleaded not guilty.

deathtotheemperor on January 24th, 2020 at 16:51 UTC »

Remember, the most charitable interpretation of this is that an unregistered foreign agent successfully convinced the President to fire a career State Department diplomat, and did so in an environment so insecure he could record it on his phone.

That's the best-case scenario.

slakmehl on January 24th, 2020 at 16:28 UTC »

"Get rid of her!" is what the voice that appears to be President Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it."

On the recording, it appears the two Giuliani associates are telling President Trump that the U.S. ambassador has been bad-mouthing him, which leads directly to the apparent remarks by the President. The recording was made by Fruman according to sources familiar with the tape.

And there it is, the consummation of a a criminal conspiracy currently under federal indictment in the Southern District of New York, personally directed by Donald Trump: an exchange of public announcements by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General (Yuriy Lutsenko) which would help rig the 2020 US election for Trump in exchange for firing the US Ambassador to Ukraine (Maria Yovanovich).

This is a bit confusing, because this conspiracy predates Trump's direct extortion of President Zelensky. Here is a summary:

The SDNY indictment of Parnas explicitly describes the conspiracy with Lutsenko, at the time the corrupt prosecutor general of Ukraine, as a core subject of the indictment:

"They sought political influence not only to advance their own financial interests, but to advance the political interests of at least one foreign official ⁠— a Ukrainian government official [Lutsenko] who sought the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine," Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a Thursday news conference.

Recently revealed text messages between Parnas and Lutsenko yielded the most conclusive evidence yet that Lutsenko was specifically offering to fabricate claims about the Bidens in exchange for Yovanovich's termination.

The messages, written in Russian, show Lutsenko urging Parnas to force out Yovanovitch in exchange for cooperation regarding Biden. At one point, Lutsenko suggests he won’t make any helpful public statements unless “madam” is removed.

“It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam — you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B,” Lutsenko wrote to Parnas in a March 22 message on WhatsApp.

As WSJ reported in October, and which is now supported by a smoking gun audio recording, Yovanovitch's removal was personally ordered by Donald Trump, consummating the conspiracy.

This scheme fell apart when Vlodimir Zelenskiy was elected President running on an anti-corruption platfrom, and terminated Lutsenko, who then became the subject of investigation for abuse of power.

In the infamous phone call, Trump specifically berated Zelenskiy for Lutsenko's termination:

“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky, in what people familiar with the conversation said was a reference to Mr. Lutsenko.

“A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down,” Mr. Trump said, later adding that Mr. Lutsenko “was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor.”

In the same phone call, he also explicitly referenced Yovanovitch's removal and his displeasure with her.

In a telephone conversation that has set off a political crisis for Mr. Trump, he told Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, that she was “bad news.”

“She’s going to go through some things,” he added.

We learned last week that the "things" Yovanovich was going through included extra-legal surveillance by Parnas or his associates, and discussion of paying entities within Ukraine to coerce, and potentially commit violence against, Yovanovich.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump was personally aware of everything that was going on, as was asserted in a letter revealed last week, from Rudy Giuliani to Vlodomir Zelensky when all of this was beginning, that everything they were doing was with the explicit "knowledge and consent" of Donald Trump.

reverendrambo on January 24th, 2020 at 16:19 UTC »

This is audio from April 2018!!

Edit 3: Lutsenko froze the four Ukranian investigations into Manafort in April 2018, and I think in return he wanted Yavanovich removed.

Edit 4: then theres this: Rudy says he started investigating Biden 2 years ago

https://twitter.com/kathrynw5/status/1220801261437628417?s=19

Edit 1: this is significant for multiple reasons

1) it shows the conspiracy to remove Yavanovich is longstanding

2) it shows that trump was trying to gain favor in Ukraine since during the Mueller investigation. He was angling for anything that could appear to discredit the findings that Russia interfered for his benefit. That's what the entire "crowdstrike" server request was all about on the July 25 call.

Additionally, Paul Manafort was indicted for money laundering through the former Ukrainian prime minister Viktor Yanukovuch. He also worked with Konstantin Kilimnick to get Ukraine closer to Russia (in addition to sharing voter data). Trump would want to do whatever he could to throw cold water on these connections

Edit 2: this NYT article was written just 2 days after this audio was recorded

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/world/europe/ukraine-mueller-manafort-missiles.html#click=https://t.co/NmDeHXDqOq

But in Ukraine, where officials are wary of offending President Trump, four meandering cases that involve Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, have been effectively frozen by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor.

...

The new government established a special prosecutor to pursue corruption in the former administration. By late last year, the prosecutor, Serhiy Horbatyuk, had opened about 3,000 cases, including four related to Mr. Manafort’s consulting for the former president and his political party.

The order issued in April [2018] isolated these four investigations. The cases were not closed, the prosecutor general’s office said in a statement, but the order blocked Mr. Horbatyuk from issuing subpoenas for evidence or interviewing witnesses. “We have no authority to continue our investigation,” Mr. Horbatyuk said in an interview.

One inquiry dealt with possible money laundering in a single $750,000 payment to Mr. Manafort from a Ukrainian shell company. The payment formed one part of the multimillion dollar transfers to Mr. Manafort from politicians in Ukraine that underpin indictments filed by Mr. Mueller in federal court in Washington and Virginia. Before the case was frozen, prosecutors had subpoenaed records from Ukrainian banks.

Another concerned a former chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s foreign relations committee, Vitaly Kalyuzhny, who had signed nine of 22 entries designated for Mr. Manafort in a secret ledger of political payoffs uncovered after the 2014 revolution. The ledger showed payouts totaling $12.5 million for Mr. Manafort.

The handwritten accounting document, called in Ukraine the Black Ledger, is an evidential linchpin for investigating corruption in the former government. Mr. Manafort denied receiving under-the-table payments from the party and his spokesman said the ledger might be a forgery. The other two cases looked at Skadden Arps, which wrote a report with Mr. Manafort’s participation that was widely seen as whitewashing the politically motivated arrest and imprisonment of Mr. Yanukovych’s principal rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko.

Two months before Ukraine’s government froze the cases, Mr. Horbatyuk reached out to Mr. Mueller’s office with a formal offer to cooperate by sharing evidence and leads. Mr. Horbatyuk said that he sent a letter in January and did not receive a reply, but that the offer was now moot, since he has lost the authority to investigate.