US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised an investigation on Friday to determine whether the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, fired last year and heard as a witness in the Democrats’ investigation into Donald Trump’s removal, had was placed under surveillance by relatives of the billionaire. Democrats in the House of Representatives released documents this week suggesting that Marie Yovanovitch’s whereabouts were being observed.
After several days of silence, Mike Pompeo told two conservative media that he had never heard of any surveillance of Ms. Yovanovitch.
“We will do everything we can to find out if something has happened,” said the head of US diplomacy on the radio. “I think it will be proven that most of what has been reported is false, but our obligation – my obligation as secretary of state – is to ensure that it is examined” in the context of an investigation .
Messages exchanged between Lev Parnas – an associate of the personal lawyer for US President Rudy Giuliani – and a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives, Robert Hyde, were revealed this week. They suggest that the latter was communicating with people in Ukraine who were monitoring the ambassador’s movements in March, shortly before the diplomat’s recall to Washington, on the orders of the president, in May.
Ukraine announced an investigation on Thursday, and the FBI visited Hyde’s home on Thursday, an unnamed source quoted by CNN said.
Pompeo said he never met Mr. Parnas, a businessman of Ukrainian descent.
The Democrats suspect Donald Trump of having wanted, by urgently recalling this experienced diplomat, to leave the field open to relatives so that they can put pressure on Ukraine.
It is these pressures that are at the root of the dismissal procedure initiated in Congress. Donald Trump, whose trial will begin in the Senate on Tuesday, is accused of having asked Kiev to smear political rival Joe Biden, well placed to face him in the presidential election in November.
During a telephone exchange at the heart of the procedure between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, the latter had criticized the diplomat when she had already been recalled from Kiev. “Things are going to happen to him,” he said.
She said she felt threatened by the remarks, and testified in Congress as part of the Democrats’ investigation.
Mike Pompeo had been criticized for not having publicly supported the diplomat.
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