Lev Parnas

Ukraine's national police are investigating allegations that U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was under surveillance in Kyiv last spring — an allegation made in WhatsApp messages between a U.S. politician and Lev Parnas.

"Ukraine cannot ignore such illegal activities on the territory of its own state," the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine said in a statement Thursday. The ministry says it's asking the FBI to help its inquiry.

Ukraine’s government announced Thursday that police are investigating whether ousted U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was subject to illegal surveillance, in response to new documents released ahead of President Trump’s impeachment trial.

Those documents, released by Democratic lawmakers, showed Lev Parnas -- an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani -- communicating about the removal of Marie Yovanovitch as the ambassador to Ukraine.

The day the House submitted articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate, a Ukraine-born associate of Trump’s lawyer said that “President Trump knew exactly what was going on" in Ukraine during the White House's alleged pressure campaign at the center of Trump's upcoming trial.

Lev Parnas, who is alleged to have assisted in the pressure campaign,, said Trump and Giuliani were routinely informed of the behind-the-scenes developments in the work he did on their behalf in Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — Lev Parnas, a key associate to Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer working for the president who ran the Ukrainian backchannel campaign at the center of Trump’s impeachment, told MSNBC on Wednesday that "President Trump knew exactly what was going on."

House impeachment investigators released a new set of evidence that was obtained from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani — including voicemails, photos, and text messages between Parnas and high-level figures within Trump’s orbit.

The material includes voicemail messages Parnas received from Giuliani and Victoria Toensing, a prominent Trump-aligned lawyer, both of whom have been identified as players in an effort to force the removal of the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, during the spring.

The White House on Thursday dismissed allegations from Lev Parnas that President Trump was aware of a scheme to get Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rivals as a media blitz from the indicted businessman threatened to shake-up impeachment proceedings.

Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman and former associate of the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, turned over evidence to House investigators that detailed the pressure campaign against Ukraine and alleged in an interview late Wednesday that Trump was fully aware of the efforts.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee chairman said his panel will investigate what he says are “profoundly alarming” text messages that have raised questions about the possible surveillance of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch before she was ousted by the Trump administration last spring.

The American impeachment drama has taken a fresh turn with the release of new documents. Here’s a look at what they mean and what their importance might be.

The note is an ink scribble on letterhead from the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Vienna. On the first page, at the top, there’s a highlight star, and then a summary of the enterprise’s main point: “get Zalensky to Announce that the Biden case will Be Investigated.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats have released a trove of documents they obtained from Lev Parnas, a close associate of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, including a handwritten note that mentions asking Ukraine’s president to investigate “the Biden case.”

Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, is set to turn over data from his iPhone and documents seized by the U.S. government to a House of Representatives committee investigating President Donald Trump.

The material was subpoenaed by the House Intelligence committee and is essential to its ability to “corroborate the strength“ of Parnas’s potential testimony, Parnas’s lawyer Joseph Bondy wrote in a letter to a federal judge Monday.