Lev Parnas Adds New Details on Push to Oust U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/nyregion/lev-parnas-trump-impeachment.html

Version 4 of 5.

In April 2019, Rudolph W. Giuliani believed he was on the cusp of achieving an important goal: ousting the United States ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch. As Ms. Yovanovitch’s standing with the White House grew more precarious, Mr. Giuliani texted an associate.

“He fired her again,” Mr. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, told the associate, Lev Parnas.

Mr. Parnas responded in kind.

“I pray it happens this time I’ll call you tomorrow my brother,” he wrote.

The exchange was included in an array of documents released by House Democrats on Tuesday that offered new details on the shadow diplomacy campaign at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment and highlighted the effort to remove Ms. Yovanovitch.

Mr. Parnas, who is facing federal charges in Manhattan, recently turned the documents over to the House Intelligence Committee as part of its impeachment inquiry.

One of the new documents shows Mr. Giuliani saying that he had Mr. Trump’s blessing to seek a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president-elect, last spring, potential new evidence on the eve of the president’s impeachment trial.

Mr. Giuliani has previously said he was acting at Mr. Trump’s direction in his dealings with Ukrainian officials, but the letter released on Tuesday is the first public document that says he was doing so.

“In my capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent, I request a meeting with you on this upcoming Monday, May 13th or Tuesday, May 14th,” Mr. Giuliani wrote in the letter to Mr. Zelensky, who was sworn in as president soon after.

Mr. Giuliani shared a copy of the letter with Mr. Parnas, who then texted it to a close aide to Mr. Zelensky.

Many of the documents released on Tuesday highlight the effort by Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Parnas and a Ukrainian prosecutor to have Ms. Yovanovitch removed.

Mr. Giuliani had been critical of Ms. Yovanovitch, whom he and other Republicans have said opposed Mr. Trump. She also butted heads with the Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, over the nature of his investigations.

In March, Mr. Lutsenko messaged Mr. Parnas in Russian on the WhatsApp messaging service to say that he was making progress in getting information about Mr. Trump’s rivals, according to a translation provided by impeachment investigators.

Mr. Lutsenko added: “And here you can’t even get rid of one [female] fool,” an apparent reference to Ms. Yovanovitch. He also inserted a frowning emoji.

“She’s not a simple fool[,] trust me,” Mr. Parnas responded. “But she’s not getting away.”

Mr. Trump ultimately recalled Ms. Yovanovitch from her post in late April.

In a separate series of cryptic text messages, Mr. Parnas communicated with another man who appeared to be monitoring the movements of Ms. Yovanovitch. The texts, exchanged in March on WhatsApp, indicated that the second man, Robert F. Hyde, was in touch with people in Ukraine who were watching Ms. Yovanovitch.

“They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” one message from Mr. Hyde to Mr. Parnas read.

It was not clear who was watching the ambassador or why.

“Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,” said Lawrence S. Robbins, a lawyer for Ms. Yovanovitch. “We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.”

In a brief interview conducted via text on Tuesday, Mr. Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut, denied that he had tracked Ms. Yovanovitch’s movements in Kyiv, and called Representative Adam B. Schiff, the intelligence committee chairman, a “commie.”

In a post on Twitter late Tuesday, Mr. Hyde suggested that he was just “playing with” Mr. Parnas in the texts.

Mr. Giuliani said on Tuesday that he had no knowledge of potential surveillance of Ms. Yovanovitch.

A lawyer for Mr. Parnas, Joseph A. Bondy, said that the text messages indicated that his client did not take part in any possible surveillance.

“There is no evidence that Mr. Parnas participated, agreed, paid money or took any other steps in furtherance of Mr. Hyde’s proposals,” Mr. Bondy said in a statement.

In a separate interview, Mr. Bondy said that he and Mr. Parnas were “very gratified that these materials” had become public, adding that “we remain committed to providing sworn testimony to Congress as it deems necessary.”

The House is set to vote on Wednesday to send its impeachment charges against Mr. Trump to the Senate, and a trial could begin in the coming days.

Mr. Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman based in Florida who was indicted in October on campaign finance charges, did not testify during the impeachment hearings last year. Mr. Bondy turned over the records to the House in response to a subpoena, after receiving permission to do so from the judge overseeing Mr. Parnas’s criminal case.

Federal prosecutors also charged Mr. Parnas’s associate, Igor Fruman, another Soviet-born businessman who worked alongside Mr. Parnas to assist Mr. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine. Two other men were also charged in the case.

Mr. Giuliani’s effort in Ukraine hinged on convincing officials there to open investigations that would benefit Mr. Trump politically. One potential investigation would center on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter; the other would involve claims that Ukraine, and not Russia, stole Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential campaign.

After their arrests, Mr. Fruman remained close to Mr. Giuliani, but Mr. Parnas split from him, vowing to speak out about the Ukrainian pressure campaign. His lawyer, Mr. Bondy, has since created a #LetLevSpeak hashtag on Twitter.

Kenneth P. Vogel and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting. Jack Begg and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.