Months before President Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, associates of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, pressed the foreign leader’s predecessor to do the same.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were arrested last month on campaign finance-related charges, met with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko earlier this year before the country’s election, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The outlet reported that the trio met in Kyiv in February, during which Giuliani’s associates asked the president to investigate both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden as well as debunked allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in exchange for state visits to the United States.
Ukrainian general prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko also reportedly attended the meeting. Poroshenko never ended up announcing the requested investigations. Lutsenko, however, said in March that he was investigating the Bidens and election interference but later indicated that he had no evidence of wrongdoing.
Poroshenko went on to lose the country’s next election to Zelenksy, whom Trump famously asked to open similar investigations during a July 25 phone call that is now at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment proceedings.
Parnas and Fruman have been mentioned in impeachment testimony so far, and Fruman has since signaled a readiness to cooperate with the impeachment effort. He and Parnas, along with businessmen Andrey Kukushkin and David Correia, have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
