The story of the Ukrainian pressure scheme

The crucial piece in understanding the Ukraine scandal is that two months before Zelensky won power – in February 2019 – Trump thought that he had done a deal which would transform Ukraine into a domestic political bludgeon.

It came as then-President Petro Poroshenko prepared to fight for re-election in two successive rounds of elections: one in March, and a runoff scheduled for April. Poroshenko was facing an uphill battle with declining popularity, and doing Trump a solid could benefit Poroshenko politically at home.

Giuliani had already met with a key Poroshenko official, prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko, in New York City in January, and then again in Warsaw in February. Giuliani was accompanied on both trips by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were later indicted for an alleged campaign finance scheme.

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By late February, the Wall Street Journal reported last week, Poroshenko was open to a deal pushed by Parnas and Fruman in which the Ukrainian leader would get electoral help via a state visit to the U.S., while he would give Trump a lift by announcing investigations into the Bidens and potential Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.

“There was pressure on Poroshenko,” Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst, told TPM. “And Lutsenko was clearly trying to arrange a deal.”

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Poroshenko never got a state visit to the U.S.

At the same time, however, Lutsenko did speak with American journalist John Solomon, then writing at The Hill newspaper. On March 20, Solomon began to publish a series of articles in which Lutsenko smeared the U.S. embassy in Kyiv and announced investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 elections.

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When Poroshenko lost in a landslide to Volodymyr Zelensky on April 21, it set off a mad scramble in Trumpworld to make inroads with the new government. It’s no coincidence that the flurry of activity in early May which has been the focus of investigators comes in the weeks after Zelensky’s win and before his May 20 inauguration.

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A comedian without political experience, Zelensky had run a suave campaign which appealed to Ukrainians frustrated with the failures of the Poroshenko administration, but faced his own criticism for his ties to a notorious oligarch named Ihor Kolomoisky, the powerful businessman who owned the TV channel on which Zelensky became famous.

Trump held a phone call with Zelensky hours after his victory was announced, and within days was referencing investigations. The President told Sean Hannity in an April 25 interview about his call with Zelensky that he was interested in reporting around allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections, saying, “I would imagine [Attorney General Bill Barr] would want to see this.”

At the same time, Giuliani and those around him embarked on a burst of activity, all oriented toward building contacts with the new leader.

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The former diplomat noted that Giuliani and his group appeared to be caught off guard by Poroshenko’s defeat. “That’s a sign of incompetence,” the former diplomat noted. “All the polls were showing that Zelensky would win.”

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Parnas and Fruman flew to Israel for a meeting with Kolomoisky in late April.

The pair reportedly approached Kolomoisky under the pretense of proposing a gas deal. But at the meeting, Kolomoisky and his attorneys have said, Parnas and Fruman switched tack, asking the oligarch for access to Zelensky, while offering to guarantee access to U.S. officials for a fee.

Kolomoisky says that he kicked the pair out of his office, telling them that he couldn’t give them access.

  TPM

I don't understand why they had to go to Kolomoisky and not to Zelensky's Chief of Staff or other official in the administration. Anyway...

In early May, Giuliani himself began to plan a trip to Kyiv. He told the New York Times on May 9 that he would go to encourage Kyiv to investigate Hunter Biden, as well as allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 elections.

Seems a pretty clear admission of what Giuliani's role in this scheme was.

Giuliani was forced to cancel the venture amid a massive public outcry.

In the end, the most significant consequence of the group’s efforts was that the one American official who had built connections in Zelensky’s government was removed from Ukraine. U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch had assembled direct channels into Zelensky’s government, according to a former American diplomat familiar with the situation. She was removed from her post in Kyiv on May 7 after lobbying by Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman.

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[The] “three amigos” – Sondland, Volker, and Perry – launched an ultimately futile quest to get Zelensky to announce investigations. Trump continued to push as well, withholding more than $250 million in security assistance from mid-July in a bid to extort Zelensky into announcing investigations into Biden and the 2016 elections.

That culminated in Trump’s infamous July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president, in which he praised Lutsenko while telling Zelensky to “do us a favor” and open politically beneficial probes.

The informal channel of U.S. policy towards Ukraine continued over the summer, before sputtering out as an unnamed tipster blew the whistle on the whole endeavor.