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

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

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.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate