Parnas and Fruman's not-guilty pleas and the Ukraine scandal

What did two associates of the U.S. president's personal lawyer tell a New York court as the Ukraine affair widened? Days before 25 October 2019, on 23 October 2019, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman pleaded not guilty at a hearing in New York City.

The two men were associates of Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump. They had aided him in a search in Ukraine for damaging information on President Trump's political opponents. They were charged with funnelling $350,000 in illegal donations to a pro-Trump political committee, and a further $20,000 to former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. The charges said they acted on behalf of at least one Ukrainian government official.

The wider scandal

The case belonged to what became known as the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That scandal arose from the discovery of Trump's attempts to press Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, potentially damaging Biden's campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Giuliani was one of the surrogates Trump enlisted in that effort.

Contacts between the White House and the Ukrainian government had culminated in a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019. Trump also blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package, in an attempt to obtain cooperation from Zelenskyy.