January 15, 2020

New Documents Appear to Link Ukrainian Oligarch With Trump’s Push for Biden Probe

Democrats released explosive new material on Trump’s Ukraine scandal.

Rudy Giuliani, and Lev Parnas on December 5, 2018Alex Edelman / AFP via Getty Images

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The same set of notes, a few pages later, mention “Joe/Victoria” and “Lenny Davis” on either side of a T-chart. “Get rid of Lenny Davis (nicely),” Parnas wrote. Last July, Firtash replaced Lanny Davis, a criminal defense lawyer and crisis manager who was representing him, with Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, a husband-wife legal team with close ties to the Trump White House and Giuliani.

Parnas’ scribblings indicate that Davis’ replacement may have been engineered by Parnas and Giuliani as part of a broader effort to advance Trump’s political interests in Ukraine. And it supports a claim by Parnas’ lawyer, Joseph Bondy, that Toensing and diGenova, through Parnas, suggested to Firtash that they could leverage their ties to Trump and Giuliani to help resolve the oligarch’s “extradition problems” if Firtash hired them and helped them find dirt on the Bidens. Firtash told the New York Times that he hired Toensing and diGenova to obtain a meeting with Attorney General William Barr. They achieved that in August, though they have not succeeded in getting the extradition effort dropped.

Davis on Tuesday told Mother Jones that while representing Firtash, “I drew a red line over anything approaching politics.” He added that he is “sad for Mr. Firtash about this situation.”

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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