Congress will investigate the “unprecedented threat” to a diplomat’s security, a senior Democrat announced.
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel of New York was referring to text messages that appear to show that ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was being monitored.
“The messages suggest a possible risk to Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s security in Kyiv before she was recalled from her post last year,” he said Wednesday. “This unprecedented threat to our diplomats must be thoroughly investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Engel was prompted by text messages between Lev Parnas, who worked with Rudy Giuliani, and Robert Hyde, a little-known Republican donor and Connecticut congressional candidate.
“Guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money … what I was told,” Hyde wrote in a text message to Parnas on March 25, 2019. Parnas replied: “Lol.”
Parnas, a Soviet-born South Florida businessman who was indicted in October on campaign finance charges, released the text messages to House impeachment investigators on Monday in response to a congressional subpoena. It’s not clear from the documents what kind of “help” was being offered or who was monitoring the ambassador, but Engel tied it to Giuliani’s effort to have Yovanovitch recalled from Ukraine.
“These threats occurred at the same time that the two men were also discussing President Trump’s efforts, through Rudy Giuliani, to smear the ambassador’s reputation,” Engel said.
The messages from Hyde include a series of updates on Yovanovitch’s whereabouts.
“They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” Hyde wrote to Parnas. The next disjointed message contained an “update” that Yovanovitch “will not be moved” from the embassy. “Update she will not be moved special security unit upgraded force on the compound people are already aware of the situation my contacts are asking what is the next step because they cannot keep going to check people will start to ask questions,” Hyde wrote.
The ambassador’s personal lawyer called for an investigation into the apparent surveillance. “Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,” attorney Lawrence Robbins said in a statement released on Yovanovitch’s behalf. “We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.”
When Yovanovitch was recalled from Ukraine in April, State Department officials ordered her to get “on the next plane home to Washington” from Kyiv.
“And I was like, ‘What? What happened?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately. You need to come home on the next plane,’” Yovanovitch told lawmakers in her Oct. 11 deposition. “And I said, ‘Physical security? I mean, is there something going on here in the Ukraine?’ Because sometimes Washington has intel or something else that we don’t necessarily know. And she said, ‘No, I didn’t get that impression, but you need to come back immediately.'”
The State Department’s diplomatic security bureau did not reply immediately to a request for comment, but the State Department appears to be working with the New York Democrat in response to the new documents. “I’m grateful for the Department’s quick response and confident this matter is getting the attention it merits,” Engel said.
Yovanovitch was the first diplomatic casualty of the controversy that gave rise to the impeachment fight, as Trump fired her in April and denounced her in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She blamed her firing on a “concerted campaign” orchestrated by corrupt Ukrainians in congressional testimony, saying that Trump broke a “sacred trust” with U.S. diplomats.
