KYIV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian authorities announced an investigation Thursday into the possible surveillance overseas of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch that a critic claimed to have orchestrated from the United States before President Donald Trump dismissed her from the post.
The statement by Ukraine's Interior Ministry followed the disclosure of new documents related to the impeachment case against Trump. The material included exchanges between Lev Parnas, a then-associate of Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and others about the need to oust Yovanovitch.
The documents, provided to the House Intelligence Committee by Parnas, include messages with Robert Hyde, a Connecticut Republican who is running for a seat in Congress. In those exchanges, Parnas was informed about Yovanovitch's physical location.
The disclosures have opened a new front in Trump's impeachment woes, while dragging Ukraine back into the spotlight six months since the controversial call between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
To this point, Ukrainian officials had been careful not to criticize their most powerful Western allies, but "Ukraine cannot ignore such illegal activities" on its territory, the Interior Ministry statement said.
FBI agents on Thursday visited Hyde's home and business in Connecticut, an official familiar with the case said, though the exact nature of their activities could not immediately be determined.
The development was first reported by CNN. Hyde did not return messages seeking comment Thursday.
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Federal prosecutors in Manhattan already had the messages from Hyde in their possession; it was only after they gave them back to Parnas as part of the criminal case against him that Parnas then turned them over to U.S. lawmakers.
Neighbors to Hyde's home and business said they saw no obvious indications that an FBI search was being executed. A spokesman for the bureau declined to comment.
In an interview with MSNBC that aired Wednesday, Parnas said he did not take Hyde's claims seriously. Parnas and another Giuliani associate, Igor Fruman, were arrested in October at Dulles International Airport and charged with attempts to funnel foreign money to U.S. politicians.
The Interior Ministry statement said Ukrainian police "are not interfering in the internal political affairs of the United States."
"However, the published messages contain facts of possible violations of Ukrainian law and of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, which protect the rights of diplomats on the territory of another state," the statement continued.
House Democrats have demanded the State Department's cooperation in determining whether anyone inside the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv disclosed real-time information about Yovanovitch's movements. In a letter Wednesday seeking any relevant internal documents, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, indicated his staff had been assured by the department's head of diplomatic security that officials there would investigate and share their findings with the Justice Department and FBI.
U.S. DIPLOMATS REACT
The State Department has declined repeated requests to offer any public defense of Yovanovitch.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was traveling in California when the Parnas texts were released, has for months resisted calls for specific statements backing Yovanovitch. One of Pompeo's top aides, veteran career diplomat Michael McKinley, resigned in October after unsuccessfully pressing for an expression of support for Yovanovitch.
U.S. diplomats have reacted to the new revelations with dismay and to the lack of public support for their colleague with disappointment. Nearly a dozen told The Associated Press that while surveillance by foreign intelligence and security services is expected and routine in many countries, such activity by Americans is of great concern, particularly if it's done by purported agents of the president.
Former diplomats and senior lawmakers were outspoken in their criticism.
"U.S. diplomats serving in the post-Soviet space often expect to be under surveillance -- just not under surveillance organized by an American with links to the president's personal attorney," said Steven Pifer, a former American ambassador to Ukraine.
"It would be ironic for Ukraine to be more interested in pursuing the security and what happened to a U.S. ambassador than the United States and the State Department is," said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. "I'm looking for a vigorous investigation of what went on here, because Ambassador Yovanovitch testified that she felt intimidated."
In a separate probe, Ukraine investigators said they were looking into a suspected Russian hack into computers at Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which is at the center of the impeachment inquiries.
Trump is alleged to have withheld military aid to Ukraine as possible leverage to open a probe into alleged corruption at Burisma. Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, had served on the Burisma board.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov met Thursday with an FBI representative based in Ukraine and officially requested U.S. assistance in the two cases, according to a Ukraine government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing investigations.
In the WhatsApp messages between Parnas and Hyde, the latter suggests he's in contact with individuals in Ukraine who were monitoring Yovanovitch's movements.
"She's talked to three people. Her phone is off. Her computer is off," Hyde allegedly texted to Parnas, adding that Yovanovitch was under heavy security. "We have a person inside," another text message read. Another said: "guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money ... is what I was told."
Yovanovitch returned to Washington after being told in a late-night phone call to get on the next plane home for her own safety by the director general of the Foreign Service, according to witness testimony in the impeachment inquiry. The nature of any possible threat was not specified and remains unclear.
'I BARELY KNOW THE GUY'
Hyde, who told Parnas he was with a "private security" team in Kyiv, was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital last year after police were called to Trump's Doral resort outside Miami, police and court records show. Doral police said Hyde insisted his life was in danger and that he believed painters and landscape workers were trying to harm him.
One week after the incident in Doral, a 34-year-old political consultant obtained a temporary protection order against Hyde because of "constant harassment and stalking," according to records in Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
A District Superior Court judge issued a protective order that extends until June 2020. Hyde has appealed the order.
The consultant alleged that several incidents occurred at the Trump International Hotel in the District of Columbia.
Hyde at one point was recruiting clients as an independent contractor for the woman's firm, according to court records, but she let him go because of "subpar performance" as well as complaints from two female employees of "inappropriate behavior and advances," she said in her request for a court protective order.
Hyde was also accused of violating the restraining order last year in the Boston area, according to Malden District Court records and the prosecutor's office. Hyde's attorney in the matter, Thomas Paul Polito, could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, Hyde suggested in a television interview that he was joking in his WhatsApp messages to Parnas. Asked by Eric Bolling of the Sinclair Broadcast Group whether he had monitored Yovanovitch, Hyde said: "Absolutely not. You kidding me?"
As for Parnas, he said, "I barely know the guy."
Hyde served in the Marines from 1999 to 2005. He was stationed for part of that time in Bahrain and left with the rank of corporal, military records show. He then ran a landscaping business he'd founded in Connecticut, business records show.
The head of the Connecticut state Republican Party, J.R. Romano, said in a tweet Wednesday that he had asked Hyde, who is competing for his party's nomination, to end his campaign. Romano wrote that it had become a "distraction for the Democrats to raise money and falsely label all Republicans with his antics."
On the campaign trail, Hyde has said he was never very interested in politics until Trump became a candidate for president. Since Trump's victory, Hyde has donated about $55,000 to the president's inaugural campaign and to the Republican National Committee, records show.
Information for this article was contributed by David L. Stern, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Aaron C. Davis, Beth Reinhard, Paul Duggan Matt Zapotosky, Carol Morello, Devlin Barrett, Dalton Bennett, Alice Crites, Richard Leiby, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger of The Washington Post; and by Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/17/2020