Friday, as Democratic managers prepared their final day of impeachment arguments in the Senate, reports of a new recording began to emerge. According to the reports, Igor Fruman—a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who is now under federal indictment—recorded a conversation with President Donald Trump in April 2018, in which Trump said that he wanted the then–U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, fired.
“Get rid of her!” Trump reportedly says on the tape. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it.”
What to make of the tape? We already knew that Trump had ordered the firing, though Yovanovitch wasn’t removed for another year. If genuine, the recording shows that Trump was lying about not knowing Lev Parnas, Fruman’s partner and fellow indictee; but then, that was clear all along. It also shows that the president has terrible judgment, since he is heard ordering the firing of an ambassador based on evidently faulty information from a shady character; but then, we had ample evidence of that, too. It shows that the president speaks like a Mafia goon, but that, too, was already well attested.
If nothing else, the tape shows, again, how much evidence we still haven’t seen about the Ukraine affair. And it underscores the elaborate, slippery dance that Senate Republicans are performing. First, they vote against gathering new witnesses and evidence at the start of the impeachment trial. Second, they complain that Democratic managers are offering no new evidence. Third, they say that it is pointless to call witnesses who might provide new evidence, because the White House will simply block them. In Trump’s Washington, Kafka seems quaint.