Former Ambassador to Ukraine calls for an investigation into “disturbing” notion that she was under surveillance.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch on Tuesday called for an investigation into the “disturbing” notion that she was under surveillance from associates of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
With the release of texts turned over to House investigators by indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, Yovanovitch has once again been ensnared at the heart of the still-widening scandal that has already resulted in the impeachment of Trump. And once again, the diplomatic community is rallying to support her, expressing outrage over her treatment.
The texts released by the House Democrats Tuesday show Connecticut Republican congressional candidate Robert Hyde berating Yovanovitch and suggest he was monitoring her while she was in Kyiv and relaying her movements to Parnas. Hyde declined to comment to CNN when asked if he had surveilled Yovanovitch, who served as a key witness in the House impeachment probe.
“Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,” said Lawrence S. Robbins, Yovanovitch’s attorney, in a statement. “We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.”
A spokesperson for the Southern District of New York, where Parnas is indicted, declined to comment. The State Department did not immediately reply to requests for comment about a potential investigation and the texts.
Three retired ambassadors who know Yovanovitch expressed shock and horror Tuesday at the idea that the longtime diplomat was being surveilled by an American.
“It’s horrifying, it’s just unbelievable,” retired ambassador Jim Melville said in a phone conversation with CNN. “The very idea that there were elements, possibly of the U.S. government or connected to the U.S. government, who were trying to do an end run around everything that we’ve established to keep our mission safe is just outrageous.”
Retired ambassador Nancy McEldowney echoed that sentiment.
“I find this really shocking and alarming and the idea that American citizens would be surveilling an American ambassador with the endorsement of the president’s personal attorney, it’s just so troubling to me,” McEldowney told CNN.
Another retired ambassador said they had “never heard of anything like it.”
“It’s common that terrorists and former communists do this to us. It’s appalling and incomprehensible that somebody who is working for the president’s personal lawyer would have been doing this to our ambassador,” they told CNN. That ambassador explained that surveillance is a “real problem” that’s “unfortunately pretty common” for diplomats.
Embassies have “surveillance detection teams” — normally locally hired staff — “who actually are out there looking to see if anyone is showing unwarranted interest” in embassy operations, they said.
“There are lots of different possible motives” for surveilling diplomats, the official said, explaining that it is normally used for terrorism or intelligence gathering — sometimes to find embarrassing information on a person.