More on Yermak

Wondering about Yermak's decision to speak out only now, threatening the impeachment premise, in a previous post, I wondered if he met with Rudy last week.

He has been in contact with Rudy in the recent past, in Madrid last August.  And with Trump's former campaign communication director Bryan Lanza on November 13. (same article)

I also wondered if the Dems had any backup for Sondland's testimony that he told Yermak about the military aid and White House meeting being contingent upon Zelensky publicly announcing they were investigating the Bidens.  I didn't remember, but apparently Tim Morrison's testimony contained a second-hand bacup.

Sondland isn’t the only person who testified to this. So too did former White House aide Timothy Morrison, who said he saw Sondland did indeed pull Yermak aside and that Sondland told him about the content of the conversation in real time.

Here’s the relevant portion of Morrison’s testimony:

Q: During the Warsaw visit Ambassador Sondland, I guess, had a sidebar with Yermak?

MORRISON: Yes. Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Yermak.

Q: Did you witness that exchange?

MORRISON: I witnessed it, yes.

Q: Okay. And were you part of the exchange on did you just see it occur?

MORRISON: I saw it occur.

Q: Okay. And what did you learn about that exchange? I guess Ambassador Sondland told you what he told Yermak?

MORRISON: He came -- he essentially walked across a, you know, a -- I don’t know how to describe the room. He walked across the space and he briefed me on what he said he had said to Mn. Yermak.

Q: Okay. What did he tell you?

MORRISON: He told me that in his -- that what he communicated was that he believed the -- what could help them move the aid was if the prosecutor general would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation.

So there are two witnesses, under oath and penalty of perjury, who are testifying to this, including Morrison who was a Republican witness and wasn’t anxious to accuse Trump of wrongdoing. And it’s their word against a witness who wasn’t under oath.

It’s also worth noting that Ukraine has plenty of motivation to cast doubt on this, and that some of Yermak’s comments strain credulity.

  WaPo

Of course that's true, but it's not proof, and the Trump cabal will have all the time between now and the Senate trial to press Yermak's new statements. And to have Yermak make more statements contradicting Sondland and Morrison's testimony.

It bear[s] emphasizing that Yermak was the one most intimately familiar with the horse-trading that was going on here. His texts with Trump aides regularly attached a White House meeting for Zelensky to Ukraine announcing the investigations. To read those texts and not believe there was at least an implied quid pro quo is to put blinders on.

The default Trump supporter/Republican position. And I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't take the support for impeachment down a notch, or at least have some independents wavering.

To hear Yermak tell it, he was involved in all of those quid-pro-quo-y discussions, but when the military aid was frozen, he didn’t think that might be related to the investigations which still hadn’t been announced. If he didn’t, he was really giving the benefit of the doubt to a bunch of people who were rather clearly leveraging him.

He knew. The question is why he's coming out with this now and whether he intends to keep saying it. And Zelensky. What will he be saying?

Then again, we have the claim that Lev Parnas was there for the Giuliani/Yermak meeting, and Parnas, through his attorney, claims he wants to testify. I'm going to guess he'll try to leverage his testimony for leniency or immunity in his criminal case.  Whether the Dems will bite, I don't know.

This article was published November 22:

When Rudy Giuliani met with a senior Ukrainian official in Madrid earlier this year and urged him to investigate the Bidens, Lev Parnas was at the table, according to Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian official.

Parnas’ presence at the meeting, which has not been previously reported, indicates that he may have significant visibility into Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Kyiv to investigate a company linked to one of President Donald Trump’s political rivals.

[...]

“Giuliani introduced him as his associate/colleague, and probably said his name, but I didn’t remember it, and remembered again when I saw Lev Parnas’ face on TV and thought that this face looks familiar,” Yermak said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “But we didn’t have a conversation, I spoke only to Giuliani.”

Joseph Bondy, Parnas’ New York-based criminal defense attorney, confirmed that his client attended the meeting.

“Mr. Parnas traveled to Madrid to meet Rudolph Giuliani, where he attended Rudolph’s meeting with Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak, and witnessed Rudolph pressuring Yermak on behalf of President Trump to compel Zelensky to announce that his administration was launching a corruption investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden and alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.

[...]

Giuliani told Yermak that the Ukrainian government needed to investigate Burisma and the allegations about 2016.

“I talked to him about the whole package,” Giuliani told The Washington Post in September.

  Daily Beast

While Parnas is not the ideal witness for the Dems' impeachment process, considering his criminal activity and shady background, they may end up needing to use him anyway.

At any rate, Giuliani himself said he told Yermak "about the whole package." That doesn't translate as pressure, but at least it's an admission they talked about the Bidens. (I can't keep track of it all, but reports are that Giuliani told the Ukrainians they needed to release a public statement.)  And there are the emails between Yermak and Giuliani about the wording of the statement Trump was asking for. There are a number of emails that put Yermak squarely in the negotiations, and I'm sure he's worried about how those look to the Ukrainians. Here's one of his emails to Volker:

[8/10/19, 4:56:15 PM] Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt. Please let me know when you can talk. I think it’s possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let discuss it

Among the documents released today is a set of text messages between American and Ukrainian officials, discussing a statement that Ukrainian officials understood was essential to getting the administration to agree to a White House meeting. On the evening of August 12, Yermak sent a draft statement to Kurt Volker, then a special envoy to Ukraine.

“Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians,” Yermak’s draft stated. “I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, which in turn will prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.”

[...]

The next afternoon, on a new chain adding Sondland, Volker sent Yermak an edited draft. “Following is text with insert at the end for the 2 key items. We will work on official request,” he said. The updated draft read:

Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.

  Defense One

I highlighted the addition Volker made to the statement. Although this statement was never made, because the whole scheme was busted when the whistleblower filed his complaint, this makes it hard to believe Yermak wasn't involved in quid pro quo.  But that's what he's now saying: "We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected to any one specific issue.”

Or, maybe that's not a lie: there were two issues.