Link to the indictment. Among various campaign finance charges, here is the bombshell:
At and around the same time PARNAS and FRUMAN committed to raising those funds for Congressman-1 PARNAS met ith Congressman-1 and sought his assistance in causing the U.S. government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. PARNAS's efforts to remove the ambassador were conducted, at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.
Edit: Sure enough, the head of SDNY, Trump appointee Geoffrey Berman, just emphasized this charge
in his press conference (at 40s mark):
"They sought political influence not only to advance their own financial interests, but to advance the political interest of a Ukrainian government official who sought the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine."
This "official" is almost certain to be Yuriy Lutsenko, and the "ambassador" to be Maria Yovanovich. Parnas
is one of Rudy's "fixers", and was directly involved in pressuring both Ukrainian prosecutors involved in the conspiracy to ratfukk Biden:
"I arranged the Shokin call with the mayor," Parnas tells NPR, referring to Giuliani by his title from when he was mayor of New York City.
There also were meetings in late January in New York and mid-February in Warsaw with Yuriy Lutsenko.
"I was present but I'm not going to comment on what was discussed in those meetings," says Parnas.
This means SDNY has just arrested the bagman in:
The Original Quid Pro Quo with Yuriy Lutsenko to Exchange Maria Yovanovitch's Termination for Investigations into Biden and 2016
You might remember Maria Yovanovitch as the woman whom Trump said
"was going to go through some things" in his July call with Zelenskyy. Her firing by Donald Trump was the "quid" in the original quid pro quo conspiracy that Giuliani arranged in March 2019 with Ukraine's top prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. Here is the run down:
“We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do...Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”
- But it doesn't work, and in July they decide that Trump himself needs to pressure Zelensky directly. In the July phone call, Trump personally admonishes Zelenskyy for screwing up the Lutsenko deal:
In a White House transcript of a July 25 phone call, President Trump seemed to admonish the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for firing Lutsenko: “I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything.”
The rest is history. Zelenskyy asks about military aid, Trump says
"I would like you do us a favor, though", and then directly asks Zelenskyy for the same investigations into Biden and the Black Ledger that they had originally extracted from Lutsenko in exchange for Yovanovitch's termination. Lutsenko himself, now with no hope of getting his job back,
readily admits the allegations of wrong doing by Hunter Biden were fabrications.
Now SDNY has arrested two men who appear to have done the legwork coordinating with Lutsenko.