The Washington Post reports:

Ten days before Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman dined with President Trump at his Washington hotel, they were part of a small group of Republican Party donors who met with the president at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, a new recording shows.

The two men — who later assisted Rudolph W. Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine — were part of a gathering held in an ornate room of the property and also attended by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, according to the video and people in attendance.

While it was known that Fruman and Parnas had attended an event at Mar-a-Lago, the focus of the event, the timing and who else was in attendance had not been made public.

The April 2018 meeting came days before the two men took part in a donor dinner with the president at his Washington hotel, an encounter captured on a video released last week by Parnas’s attorney.

During that dinner, Parnas told the president that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was agitating against him, prompting Trump to abruptly call for her firing.

The recordings of the two events undercut Trump’s repeated assertions that he does not know Parnas and Fruman, who were arrested in October on campaign finance charges. “I don’t know those gentleman,” Trump said at the time. Last week, the president referred to Parnas as “a con man” and a “groupie.”

Taken together, the two recordings provide a window into Trump’s close interactions with high-dollar donors, despite his pledge to “drain the swamp.” [Continue reading…]