By DESMOND BUTLER and MICHAEL BIESECKER
Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - The Soviet-born Florida businessmen made what sounded like a outrageous pitch: Replace the CEO of Ukraine's biggest energy company and remove the anti-corruption U.S. ambassador to Kyiv as part of a plan to make millions shipping massive quantities of natural gas from Texas to Eastern Europe. It didn't seem plausible Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman could pull it off. But then the Trump administration began making the moves they had predicted. Now their efforts to profit from contacts with GOP luminaries are part of a broad federal criminal investigation into the two men and their close associate, Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney.

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