What the Parnas and Fruman plea meant for Ukraine-linked scandal
A look back at the days around 25 October 2019, when two Giuliani associates' not-guilty pleas and a crash report put Ukraine in the news.
What did Ukraine's name carry into the news on 25 October 2019? Two items from the preceding days shaped the picture: a court hearing in New York City and a published aviation report.
On 23 October 2019, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two associates of Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty at a hearing in New York City. They were charged with funnelling $350,000 in illegal donations to a pro-Trump political committee and another $20,000 to former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions, while acting on behalf of at least one Ukrainian government official. As reported at the time, the two had aided Giuliani in a search in Ukraine for damaging information on President Trump's political opponents.
The case sat inside the wider 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. That affair arose from attempts by Trump to press Ukraine to investigate his rival Joe Biden, and it involved a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 25 July 2019. It also involved the blocking of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package.
A separate report
The same day, 23 October 2019, brought a different kind of Ukrainian story. Ukraine released the final report into the Yirol crash of a Let L-410 Turbolet, prepared by South Sudan. It concluded that mistakes by both the crew and maintenance, together with poor weather, combined to cause the disaster.
The two items were unrelated, but both reached readers on the eve of 25 October 2019: one a legal step in a U.S. case with Ukrainian links, the other a technical finding about an air accident.
