TAKE HER OUT
Heading into Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, half the danger for Republican Senators was that additional damning evidence could surface during the trial, making it harder for them to acquit him while protecting their own personal reelection interests. The other half the danger was that they could convict him and then more evidence would surface, leaving egg on their faces. Now it appears we just might see both those scenarios happen.
Someone just leaked a recording to ABC News which captures Donald Trump saying this to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman in April of 2018: “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out!” Trump was referring to U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whom he ended up firing in 2019.
This new ABC News recording adds new context to Donald Trump’s promise to the President of Ukraine that Yovanovitch was going to “go through some things,” and the recent text messages which appear to show that Trump’s associates were surveilling Yovanovitch while discussing local goons to target her for unknown malicious reasons. Yovanovitch testified to the House that as she was being fired, she was warned to immediately leave Ukraine for her own safety.
Donald Trump and his team will insist that when Trump said “Take her out,” he was merely demanding that she be fired, or taken out of Ukraine. But this is a guy who is best known for his “You’re fired” catch phrase. So wouldn’t he have just said he wanted her fired? Also, why would he be telling goons like Lev and Igor to fire her? They couldn’t do that. This tape sounds like Trump was instructing his goons to have Yovanovitch killed. In addition, this proves that Trump knows Lev and Igor quite well, despite his protestations to the contrary. This also demonstrates that Trump’s Ukraine scandal has been going on for at least twenty months.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report