A former US ambassador to Ukraine has told congressional investigators that Ukrainian officials had warned her in advance that Rudy Giuliani and other allies of Donald Trump were planning to “do things, including to me” and were “looking to hurt” her.
Marie Yovanovitch, who was pushed out of her job in May on Mr Trump’s orders, said a senior Ukrainian official told her that “I really needed to watch my back”.
While the major thrust of her evidence had come out on the day she testified behind closed doors last month in the impeachment inquiry, Monday’s 317-page transcript provided new details about the bewildering sequence of events that led to the career diplomat’s removal.
Her account started with the warnings from Ukrainian officials and then led legislators through various attempts to bad mouth her in Ukraine and the US.
She also offered significant new threads of information — including the potential that the president was directly involved in a phone call with Mr Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, and the Ukrainians dating back to January 2018 — while pushing back on Republican questions suggesting she harboured opposition to Mr Trump.
She had been recalled from Kiev before the July 25 phone call between Mr Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the centre of the impeachment inquiry, but was “surprised and dismayed” by what she understood from the transcript of the call.
She told investigators she was shocked to learn Mr Trump had called her “bad news” in the phone call, adding that she felt threatened and perplexed by his remark that she was “going to go through some things”.
The diplomat added that she worried that her job and pension could be at risk but that “so far” she was not concerned about her personal safety although “a number of my friends are very concerned”.
Ms Yovanovitch was recalled from Kiev as Mr Giuliani pressed Ukrainian officials to investigate baseless corruption allegations against Democrat Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was involved with Burisma, a gas company there.
Asked directly if Mr Giuliani was promoting investigations on Burisma and Mr Biden, she said: “It wasn’t entirely clear to me what was going on.”
More directly, she drew a link between Mr Giuliani and two businessmen – Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who have been indicted in the US on charges stemming from campaign donations they made to US politicians with foreign money – as part of the campaign to oust her.
She understood they were looking to expand their business interests in Ukraine “and that they needed a better ambassador to sort of facilitate their business efforts here”.
She said was told by Ukrainian officials last November or December that Mr Giuliani was in touch with Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, “and that they had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me”.
She said she was told Mr Lutsenko “was looking to hurt me in the US”.
