Video: Trump tells associates to ‘get rid of’ U.S. ambassador to Ukraine

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump demanded the firing of then-U. S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during a private dinner with top donors in April 2018, according to a video of the event reviewed by The Washington Post.

"Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it," Trump says.

The video corroborates Lev Parnas' account of that evening. Parnas, a former associate of Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, said in a recent interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that he told Trump at that dinner that Yovanovitch was working against him. He followed that admission with an apology to Yovanovitch, saying he now believes he was wrong about her.

The Post first reported that Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman bad-mouthed Yovanovitch to Trump at the April 2018 dinner and that the president reacted strongly, saying she should be fired. The video, released in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial against Trump, further confirms that reporting, and helps bolster Parnas' claims about the access he had to the president and his inner circle.

The beginning of the video shows Trump and his guests in the palatial suite of the Trump Hotel. Tommy Hicks Jr., the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, is present, along with the president's eldest son, Donald Trump, Jr.

The group has conversation about a wide variety of international topics during the video, which is more than an hour long.

One of the guests pitches that the president should select his golf course as location for his next summit with Kim Jong Un. The president demurs, but says the North Korean leader is a “great golfer.” The group then jokes that Jong Un makes a hole-in-one on every hole in North Korea.

Trump tells the group that his wall on the Mexico border has "sharp points" will work "very strongly." He muses about Mexicans throwing drugs over the wall and hitting people on the head on the other side.

The president also complains about some of the topics that have been known to irk him, including the World Trade Organization and China.

The video was released Saturday by Joseph Bondy, an attorney for Parnas.

“Given its importance to the national interest, we decided to release this recording in a manner intended to ensure equal public access, and in an effort to provide clarity to the American people and the Senate as to the need to conduct a fair trial, with witnesses and evidence,” Bondy said.

Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Fruman, declined to comment on Friday.

In an interview with Fox News later Friday, Trump did not deny it was him on the tape. Instead, when asked about it, he defended his decision to fire Yovanovitch and skirted whether he was relying on Parnas to do it.

"Well, I wouldn't have been saying that. I probably would have said - it was Rudy there, or somebody - but I make no bones about it, I want to have ambassadors - I have every right, I want ambassadors that are chosen by me. I have a right to hire and fire ambassadors, and that's a very important thing," Trump said.

Giuliani was not at the April 2018 dinner.

Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, when asked about the tape, told reporters in the Capitol that he's "not concerned about that at all."

Vice President Mike Pence was also asked about the tape Friday during an impromptu news conference with reporters in Italy. "I have not heard the tape and would not be prepared to comment on it. All of the ambassadors for the United States of America serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States," Pence said, according to a pool report.

The audio, he added, "will only confirm what people already know: is that the president had concerns, and in his authority this president made a decision."

The recording provides further evidence of the long-running effort to push out Yovanovitch, whose ouster was sought by Yuri Lutsenko, formerly Ukraine's top prosecutor.

Text messages from last year, released by the House this month, indicated that Lutsenko agreed to provide Parnas with damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the ambassador.

The messages, written in Russian, show Lutsenko urging Parnas to force out Yovanovitch in exchange for cooperation regarding Biden. At one point, Lutsenko suggests he won't make any helpful public statements unless "madam" is removed.

"It's just that if you don't make a decision about Madam - you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B," Lutsenko wrote to Parnas in a March 22 message on WhatsApp.

It's unclear if "B" is a reference to Biden or to Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden, the former vice president's son, served from 2014 to 2019.

Four days later, Lutsenko told Parnas that work on the case against the owner of the gas company was proceeding successfully and evidence of the money transfers of "B" had been obtained.

"And here you can't even remove one fool," Lutsenko lamented, using a sad-face emoticon as he again appeared to push for Yovanovitch's ouster.

"She's not a simple fool[,] trust me," Parnas responded. "But she's not getting away."

Parnas, days later, told Lutsenko that "soon everything will turn around and we'll be on the right course." Lutsenko responded that he had copies of payments Burisma made to an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden.

The following month, Yovanovitch was removed from her post at Giuliani's urging. Lutsenko later said publicly that he found no evidence of wrongdoing under Ukrainian law by Hunter or Joe Biden.

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The Washington Post’s Paul Sonne contributed to this report.