What the Trump–Ukraine scandal looked like on 26 October 2019
A look back at the state of the affair in the days before 26 October 2019, as testimony and court appearances put Ukraine at the centre of a U.S. political storm.
How far had the Trump–Ukraine affair travelled by 26 October 2019? Two recent developments, one in Congress and one in a New York courtroom, showed that a dispute over U.S. politics had become tightly bound to Ukraine.
On 22 October 2019, William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, testified before Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. He said he had been told that Trump would withhold military aid to Ukraine, to help his reelection chances, until the country publicly declared that investigations would be launched. The investigations concerned Burisma Holdings, a company that had hired Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and Ukraine's alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
On 23 October 2019, at a hearing in New York City, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman pleaded not guilty. Both were associates of Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, who had aided him with a search in Ukraine for damaging information on the president's political opponents. 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.
The wider picture
The scandal arose from what was later understood as an effort to press Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. 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. A congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package was at the centre of the affair.
As 26 October 2019 arrived, the testimony and the criminal case were both unfolding, with Kyiv's relationship with Washington under intense scrutiny.
