WASHINGTON - Internal State Department e-mails and documents released late on Friday further implicate Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a campaign orchestrated this year by President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to pressure Ukraine for political favours.
As part of the effort to oust her, Mr Giuliani and his associates encouraged news outlets favourable to the President to publicise unsubstantiated claims about Ms Yovanovitch's disloyalty to Trump. The release of the documents, obtained by a liberal watchdog group that had filed a public records request, came as Mr Pompeo refused to voluntarily hand over State Department documents about Ukraine to the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry.
Mr Pompeo has refused to answer questions about his role in the Ukraine affair. The State Department did not reply on Saturday to detailed questions about the documents or witness testimonies in the inquiry that put the secretary at the centre of the matter. The e-mails released on Friday show that Mr Giuliani's assistant reached out to Mr Trump's assistant seeking"a good number" for Mr Pompeo to call.Mr Trump's assistant forwarded the inquiry to a State Department official, and the first call between Mr Giuliani and Mr Pompeo took place within days, the e-mails show.
In response, Mr Giuliani said, he had someone hand-deliver to Mr Pompeo's office an envelope containing a series of memos detailing claims made by a pair of Ukrainian prosecutors in interviews conducted by Mr Giuliani and his associates in January. The memos include a mix of facts and unsubstantiated claims. They cite documents from Latvia and billing invoices. And they misspell the name of one of the Ukrainian prosecutors.
Ms Yovanovitch, a career official, has served as an ambassador for Republican and Democratic presidents. In late March, Ms Yovanovitch told the third-ranking State Department official, Mr David Hale, that she felt she could no longer continue in her role unless the department issued a statement in her defence.