INSIDE: Parnas says he has tape of Trump calling for ambassador’s firing.

NEW YORK >> President Donald Trump can be heard in a taped 2018 conversation saying he wants to get rid of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, whose removal a year later emerged as an issue in Trump’s impeachment. The president was talking with a small group that included Lev Parnas, an associate of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to a report Friday about the audio recording.

Trump demanded the removal of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at an April 2018 dinner at his hotel in Washington, according to ABC News, which reported on the recording. The recording appears to contradict the president’s statements that he did not know Parnas, a key figure in the investigation. ABC said a speaker who appears to be Trump says on the recording, “Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”

Parnas and associate Igor Fruman worked with Giuliani on a push to get Ukraine to announce it would investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. On the recording, the two tell Trump that the U.S. ambassador has been insulting him, which leads directly to the apparent remarks by the president.

The White House denied any suggestion of presidential wrongdoing.

“Every president in our history has had the right to place people who support his agenda and his policies within his administration,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said.

Yovanovitch, who was viewed as an obstacle to probes into Biden and his son, Hunter, was not recalled from her position until the following April. She said the decision was based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives” that she was disloyal to Trump.

Parnas appears to say on the recording: “The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She’s still left over from the Clinton administration.”

He later can be heard telling Trump, “She’s basically walking around telling everybody ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.’ ”

House investigators have been working to document an almost yearlong effort on the part of Parnas and Giuliani to have Yovanovitch removed from her post. Parnas and Fruman were recently indicted by the Southern District of New York on charges including conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud. Both have pleaded not guilty.