Notice to readers: A video of President Donald Trump speaking about Ukraine and other issues at a 2018 dinner at the Trump Hotel in Washington was first made public in January of this year by ABC News and the Associated Press. This article was based on the original story, which was mistakenly sent a second time across the news wires as new reporting on Thursday by the AP. The repeat of the article, which also appeared on the Associated Press and other news organization websites, incorrectly implied that the video was obtained last week by the AP and ABC News. An AP spokesman, who said a human error during a computer system test led to the republication of an old story, apologized for the error. The dates in this article have been corrected.
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump inquired how long Ukraine would be able to resist Russian aggression without U.S. assistance during a 2018 meeting with donors that appears to have included the indicted associates of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
"How long would they last in a fight with Russia?" Trump is heard asking in the audio portion of a video recording, moments before he calls for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. She was removed a year later after a campaign to discredit her by Giuliani and others, an action that was part of Democrats' case in the president's Senate impeachment trial.
A video recording of the entire 80-minute dinner at the Trump Hotel in Washington was obtained Jan. 25 by The Associated Press. Excerpts were first published Jan. 24 by ABC News. People can be seen in only some portions of the recording.
Top House Judiciary Republican Jim Jordan on Thursday asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to turn over documents related to the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma, where Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, served on the board.
The recording at the Washington dinner appears to contradict the president's statements that he did not know the Giuliani associates Lev Parnas or Igor Fruman, key figures in the investigation who were indicted last year on campaign finance charges. The recording came to light as Democrats continued to press for witnesses and other evidence to be considered during the impeachment trial.
On the recording, a voice that appears to be Parnas' can be heard saying, "The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is, we got to get rid of the ambassador." He later can be heard telling Trump: "She's basically walking around telling everybody, 'Wait, he's gonna get impeached. Just wait.'"
Trump responds: "Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."
Ukraine came up during the dinner in the context of a discussion of energy markets, with the voice appearing to be Parnas' describing his involvement in the purchase of a Ukrainian energy company.
The group then praises Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to which the president says: "Pompeo's going to be good. He's doing a good job. Already he's doing a good job."
At the beginning of the video, Trump is seen posing for photos before entering the blue-walled dining room. A voice that appears to be Fruman's is heard saying "it's a great room" before a chuckle. "I couldn't believe myself."
Also visible in the video are the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., and former counselor to the president, Johnny DeStefano. Jack Nicklaus III, the grandson of the golf icon, and New York real estate developer Stanley Gale also attended the event for a pro-Trump group.
Just a few minutes into the conversation, Trump can be heard railing against former President George W. Bush, China, the World Trade Organization and the European Union. "Bush, he gets us into the war, he gets us into the Middle East, that was a beauty," Trump says. "We're in the Middle East right now for $7 trillion." He later says: "China rips us off for years and we owe them $2 trillion." The president blames the WTO because it "allowed China to do what they're doing."
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uABVK1QMYA]
"The WTO is worse" than China, he declares. "China didn't become great until the WTO."
Trump also seemed to question the U.S. involvement in the Korean War: "How we ever got involved in South Korea in the first place, tell me about it. How we ended up in a Korean War."
KIM 'A GREAT GOLFER'
Trump provided the guests with an update ahead of his first meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, revealing that he'd settled on a date and location. One of the people in attendance sought to pitch a different location: Songdo, South Korea, which is 70% owned by Gale International and features a Nicklaus-designed golf course.
"You know that Kim Jong Un is a great golfer," Trump is heard telling the guests, who laugh.
Trump also discussed the border crisis and plans for a border wall with Mexico, insisting that he wants to build a concrete wall but had heard from law enforcement officials that it isn't viable. "You do have to be able to see through the wall, I think," Trump says. He says drug dealers would throw heavy bundles of drugs over the wall, which could kill Border Patrol agents.
"They have a catapult and they throw it over the wall, and it lands on the other side of the wall and it can hit people. Can you imagine you get hit with 100 pounds?" the president says. "The whole thing is preposterous. I would've loved to have seen, to see a concrete wall, but you just can't do that."
Toward the end of the dinner, the discussion turns to the upcoming election and media.
"Magazines are dead," Trump says.
"I think cable TV is OK. If we ever lost an election, cable TV is dead," he says, the partygoers laughing. "Can you imagine if they had a normal candidate? It's all they talk about. If they had Hillary, crooked Hillary, their ratings would be one-fifth."
Trump says he believes he would have had a harder time in 2016 if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic nominee.
Near the end of the dinner, Parnas allegedly can be heard presenting what he says is a gift to Trump from "the head rabbi in Ukraine" and rabbis in Israel, drawing a parallel between Trump and the messiah. "It's like messiah is the person that's come to save the whole world. So it's like you're the savior of the Ukraine."
"All Jew people of Ukraine, they are praying for you," Fruman appears to say, as Parnas allegedly tells Trump to show the gift to Jared Kushner, the president's Jewish son-in-law and senior adviser, to explain its meaning. In the video, it appears Fruman is seated across the narrow part of the rectangular table and one seat over from the president.
AIMING AT BIDEN
On Burisma, Jordan, R-Ohio, is seeking documents specifically linked to Hunter Biden and to Burisma Holdings Ltd. founder Mykola Zlochevsky, along with former Secretary of State John Kerry's stepson, Christopher Heinz, and Devon Archer, a longtime business partner of Hunter Biden who also was on the Burisma board.
Trump has been using the younger Biden's work with Burisma to criticize the presumptive Democratic nominee, who dealt with Ukraine while serving as vice president in the Obama administration. The president has tried to turn the tables on Democrats, who impeached him on charges he abused his office by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate whether Biden put pressure on Ukraine to help Burisma.
Jordan's inquiry is the latest effort to raise issues about Hunter Biden's work with Burisma. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, has announced the panel will vote Wednesday on whether to subpoena Blue Star Strategies, a firm that represented Burisma Holdings when Hunter Biden was on its board.
The Biden campaign has previously dismissed such GOP-led investigations as a political ploy.
Jordan doesn't detail what precisely he may be investigating. He wrote in a letter to Pompeo: "Burisma is the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian oil and gas company founded by Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian minister who allegedly allowed Burisma to receive mineral licenses without public auction."
In the letter, Jordan said that new information tied to Burisma has surfaced in redacted documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and in news reports.
He told Pompeo he wants the documents "in light of this new information, and in order to better understand any previous barriers to our ability to cooperate with international law enforcement efforts related to Burisma."
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Colleen Long, Mike Balsamo and Lynn Berry of The Associated Press; and by Billy House of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 05/15/2020