Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he didn’t know about possible surveillance of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch before she was ousted from her post by the Trump administration.
“I never heard about this at all. Until this story broke, I had, to the best of my recollection, had never heard of this at all,” Pompeo told Hugh Hewitt Friday.
Documents and text messages turned over to the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week by Lev Parnas, an associate to President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, included exchanges about the need to remove Yovanovitch from her post.
Parnas, who has been charged with campaign finance violations, and Trump donor and Republican congressional candidate Robert Hyde discussed Yovanovitch’s whereabouts in Ukraine in text messages from March 2019. Hyde implied in the messages that he or his allies were surveilling her.
“She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off. She’s next to the embassy. Not in the embassy. Private security. Been there since Thursday,” Hyde said in one of his messages to Parnas.
“They know she’s a political puppet. They will let me know when she’s on the move,” he said in another message.
Parnas told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday that he didn’t take Hyde’s comments about monitoring Yovanovitch seriously.
Ukrainian officials announced Thursday they were launching an investigation into the possible surveillance.
“Ukraine’s position is not to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States of America. However, the published references cited by the Washington Post contain a possible violation of the law of Ukraine and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which protects the rights of a diplomat on the territory of the foreign country,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement.
