‘I needed Yovanovitch out of the way’: Giuliani confirms he pushed for ambassador’s ouster – By Madison Dibble (Washington Examiner) / Dec 16 2019
Rudy Giuliani admitted that he pushed for former United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to be fired after she became an obstacle to his goals in the country.
Yovanovitch testified during the House impeachment hearings where she revealed that she felt threatened by Giuliani and President Trump prior to her removal from the ambassadorship. She had been appointed to the seat in 2016 by President Barack Obama but claimed that Giuliani was working to get her kicked out of her post after the start of the Trump administration.
Giuliani confirmed Yovanovitch’s theory that he wanted her to be fired in an interview for the December issue of the New Yorker.
“I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he told the outlet. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”
Giuliani, who works as Trump’s personal attorney, had been investigating possible corruption between former Vice President Joe Biden and the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma, which had hired his son Hunter for a high-paying board position while he was still in office.
The former New York City mayor admitted that he was “kind of pissed off at” Yovanovitch after she blocked the visa request of Viktor Shokin, who was slated to come to New York to help Giuliani’s efforts. Shokin was the prosecutor Biden forced out by threatening to withhold aid if he were not removed over corruption allegations.
Giuliani’s comments were part of a larger profile of ex-Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, who was believed to be an anti-corruption advocate. Lutsenko also had problems with Yovanovitch because the U.S. embassy believed he was corrupt despite his anti-corruption facade.
Lutsenko and Giuliani were connected by their distaste for Yovanovitch, but their relationship crumbled after Lutsenko refused to investigate Burisma and the Bidens.
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