Investigators from the FBI visited the home and landscaping business office of Republican congressional candidate Robert Hyde in Connecticut on Thursday after he was implicated in the recent Ukraine controversy.
One of Hyde’s neighbors, according to NBC News, said that an FBI agent arrived at Hyde’s home just before dawn, parking a gray SUV in his front yard. The neighbor claims that the agent did not, however, physically enter Hyde’s home and left by 10:30 a.m. Hyde reportedly had two signs on his property, one that said, “No Trespassing,” and the other, which indicated that security cameras were filming the property.
A “senior law enforcement official” confirmed the visit to both NBC and CNN, but an FBI spokesperson in New Haven, Connecticut, declined to give public comment.
Hyde, 40, was implicated in the Ukraine controversy after documents from the House Intelligence Committee showed him discussing a plot to oust and monitor then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch on the WhatsApp digital application. “She talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off,” he wrote in a message to former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas. Hyde has claimed he was under the influence of alcohol when he sent the message.
Parnas echoed Hyde’s claim in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, saying, “I think he was either drunk or he was trying to make himself bigger than he was, so I didn’t take it seriously.”
