By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) -A former associate of Rudy Giuliani who sought to dig up damaging information in Ukraine about U.S. President Joe Biden before the 2020 election, pleaded guilty on Friday to one criminal count in a campaign finance case.
Igor Fruman told U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken in Manhattan federal court on Friday he would plead guilty.
The changed plea could increase legal pressure on Giuliani, the one-time New York City mayor and U.S. Attorney in Manhattan who later became former U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.
Federal prosecutors have been examining Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/us/judge-orders-special-master-review-rudolph-giulianis-electronic-devices-2021-05-28, including whether he violated lobbying laws by acting as an unregistered foreign agent while working for Trump.
Giuliani has not been charged and has denied wrongdoing.
The Belarus-born Fruman and co-defendant Lev Parnas, a Ukraine-born businessman, had pleaded not guilty to concealing an illegal $325,000 donation to support Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, and lying to the Federal Election Commission.
Their case has drawn added scrutiny because of their work with Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine.
Giuliani enlisted Fruman and Parnas to help uncover dirt about then-Democratic presidential candidate Biden and his son, Hunter.
Prosecutors said they also helped with an effort to remove then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump fired in May 2019.
In April 2018, Giuliani began representing Trump, a fellow Republican, as then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller probed Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Giuliani is no longer Trump’s lawyer. His New York law license was suspended in June after a court found he had lied by arguing that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
(Reporting by Jon Stempel in New York and writing by Tom Hals in Wilmington, DelawareEditing by Alistair Bell)
