Iran Press/ America: Internal State Department emails and documents released late Friday further implicate Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a campaign orchestrated this year by President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to pressure Ukraine for political favors.
The emails indicate that Pompeo spoke at least twice by telephone with Giuliani in March as Giuliani was urging Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rivals, and trying to oust the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, The New York Times reported.
Pompeo ordered Yovanovitch’s removal the next month. One call between Giuliani and Pompeo was arranged with guidance from Trump’s personal assistant, the documents suggest.
The documents also show that the State Department sent members of Congress a deliberately misleading reply about Yovanovitch’s departure after they asked about the pressure on her.
As part of the effort to oust her, Giuliani and his associates encouraged news outlets favorable to the president to publicize claims about Yovanovitch’s disloyalty to Trump.
The documents and recent congressional testimonies in the impeachment inquiry tie Pompeo closely to efforts by Trump and Giuliani to persuade the Ukrainian government to announce investigations that could help Trump politically.
Those include investigations into the family of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democratic presidential candidate, and claims that Ukrainian officials worked to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
As Trump sought those investigations, he and his team held up $391 million of military aid critical to Ukraine and a coveted White House meeting.
The documents bolstered testimony delivered Wednesday by Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union and a player in the pressure campaign on Ukraine.
He told lawmakers in a public hearing that Pompeo had full knowledge of the campaign and even approved certain hard-line tactics.
Pompeo and his top aides “knew what we were doing, and why,” Sondland said, noting that “everyone was in the loop.”
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