The weird story of former Texas Rep. Pete Sessions' involvement in the Trump scandal.
WASHINGTON ― It was April 2018, and longtime Rep. Pete Sessions could already tell he was in the race of his life.
Trump has said he doesn’t know Parnas and Fruman, but admitted there may be pictures of him with the men at a fundraiser. They were, at least, in the same room at the Mar-a-Lago event. The campaign by Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman to oust Yovanovitch appears to have come about through a confluence of interests. Yovanovitch, a career foreign service officer, was an obstacle to Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Parnas and Fruman wanted her gone because she stood in the way of their reported scheme to purge the leadership of Naftogaz, Ukraine’s national oil and gas company.
The MeetingWhile Parnas and Fruman had a direct line to President Trump through Giuliani, they also sought last year to build congressional support for removing Yovanovitch. Giuliani had an answer for that, too. According to former staffers, Sessions, who would lose his reelection bid, was also impressionable enough to do exactly what Parnas and Fruman wanted. As any lobbyist could tell you, Sessions was a useful connection because he was willing to do things like, say, write a letter.
The LetterThe letter to Pompeo, dated May 11, 2018, is simple and short. It says that Sessions has received “concrete evidence from close companions that Ambassador Yovanovitch has spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current Administration.” Sessions refused to answer questions on the record about last year’s meeting, telling HuffPost that he “had been asked not to do interviews.” A federal grand jury subpoenaed Sessions in October to testify about his role in the Ukraine affair, and Parnas and Fruman were arraigned around the same time as part of a case being pursued by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. They both pleaded not guilty.
Those contributions violated campaign finance laws banning anyone from making a contribution in someone else’s name, according to the federal indictment. Parnas and Fruman made the $325,000 contribution to Trump’s super PAC through a shell corporation called Global Energy Producers LLC. Federal investigators say this company did no business and was not even active at the time it made the contribution.
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