Article snippet: WASHINGTON - Two associates of Rudy Giuliani pressed the then-president of Ukraine in February to announce investigations into former vice president Joe Biden’s son and purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election in exchange for a state visit, and a lawyer for one of the associates said Friday that they were doing so because Giuliani - acting on President Donald Trump’s behalf - asked them to. The Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, met with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kyiv, said Edward MacMahon Jr., a lawyer for Parnas. He said they were working on behalf of Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who was operating on orders from Trump. ‘‘There isn’t anything that Parnas did in the Ukraine relative to the Bidens or the 2016 election that he wasn’t asked to do by Giuliani, who was acting on the direction of the president,’’ MacMahon said. The February meeting - first reported by the Wall Street Journal - shows how Trump’s lawyer and those working for him were attempting to spur investigations that would help Trump politically months before the president pressed his Ukrainian counterpart in a controversial phone call to conduct such probes. That July call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky, who succeeded Poroshenko, would become the subject of a whistleblower complaint, and eventually lead House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s conduct. Parnas and Fruman, both clients of Giuliani who a... Link to the full article to read more