taylor testified that yermak expressed concerns. testimony showed that he was an intermediary to secure a mowing for the newly elected ukrainian president. he says once we have a date, we ll call for a press briefing where they plan to announce, quote, burmisa investigations. it was point to as the meeting for lenk. so she just laid out all of these key players. of course, also including lev parnas and igor fruman. in reporting by vicky ward, we ve learned both the men had a meeting with the president and j rudolph giuliani last year at the hannukkah party where they described what was a secret mission to pressure the ukrainian government to pressure
you re not dealing with seasoned professionals. proef diplomats. proef intelligence people who will tell you more about who it is that you re dealing with. things can go sideways quite badly which is what happened in this case. you have the tres amigos, rudolph giuliani, and these former soviet criminals. corrupt guys who are now in jail. the idea is we need to find somebody. i think this is happening with happening inside the trump administration. the president was saying we need to find somebody who would be willing to pursue my interests. biden and those types of theoretical corruption issues, as opposed to doing something for u.s. foreign policy, in the national interests. folks like ambassador yovanovitch and others would have pursued. it is more than like reply donald trump and his administration realized if they went to the professionals and said here s what i need you to do.
anyone who has been following the peemt proceedings closely likely, of course, knows the name marie yovanovitch, especially after today. she of course the ousted u.s. ambassador to ukraine. all of those other people who came up during her testimony. the beginning of the story is an every to get you out of the way. an effort by rudy giuliani and corrupt ukrainians. those are a few of the many names intertwined in this increasingly complicated story. it is important to know them. tell us how these people fit into the broader story here? let s start with the former ukrainian prosecutors. they met with rudy giuliani and
as corrupt. giuliani tried to overturn that decision. now the jue associates. giuliani did not work alone. he was assisted in ukraine efforts by lev parnas and igor fruman. prosecutors alleged they ve been advocating for the remove of yovanovitch. they met with the former congressman pete sessions of texas who wrote in 2018 to secretary of state mike pompeo that yovanovitch had bad-mouthed the president. according to the indictment, they pledged to donate $20,000 to sessions campaign. they have been working close when i giuliani cynic at least 2018 in his effort to dig up dirt on biden. at the same time they were pursuing information for giuliani, they were pitching a ukrainian natural gas company. one of giuliani s contacts in the administration was an aide to president zelensky. they met in august and bill
ambassador. in my line of work, perhaps in yours as well, all we have is our reputation. so this has been a very painful period. the president has criticized her repeatedly including the july 25th call with president zelensky calling her bad news and saying she would go through some things. i was shocked and devastated that i would feature in a phone call between two heads of state in such a manner where president trump said that i was bad news to another world leader. and that i would be going through some things. so i was, it was a terrible moment. terrible and threatening. sounded like a threat. did you feel threatened? i did. yovanovitch quickly called out rudy giuliani, the