At the same time, the newspaper does not report who exactly followed Maria Jovanovic and for what purpose.
Entrepreneur Lev Parnassus, who allegedly carried out instructions from Rudolf Giuliani, US President Donald Trump’s lawyer, in Ukraine, knew about the surveillance of Maria Yovanovich when she was the US ambassador to Kiev. This was reported by The New York Times on Tuesday with reference to the data stored in Parnassus’ smartphone and transmitted last weekend to the Democrats in Congress.
According to the publication, this is the correspondence of Giuliani’s assistant in the WhatsApp messenger in March 2019 with a certain Robert Hyde. According to the newspaper, he was connected to the people in Ukraine who were following the then US ambassador. “They want to help if you and we like the price”, – Hyde wrote.
The newspaper is not yet in a position to claim who was following Jovanovic and for what purpose.
The publication makes no secret of the correspondence that Parnassus` lawyer Joseph Bondy sent to the Democrats at the special intelligence committee of the US House of Representatives, along with photographs and other materials. Bondi himself informed that all this data is relevant to the investigation under the Trump impeachment procedure. Lower House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California) announced on Tuesday that the vote on the resolution transferring the indictment to the Senate as part of the impeachment procedure of the U.S. President will be held on Wednesday.
Yovanovitch was appointed to Kiev in 2016 under Democratic President Barack Obama, and in May 2019 she resigned at the personal request of Trump, who accused her of disloyalty. Her resignation took place even before the current Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, took office.
The Washington scandal
In October 2019, Parnassus and businessman Igor Fruman were detained in the United States. The Prosecutor’s Office of the Southern District of New York State charged them and two other individuals with violations of lobbying activities. The businessmen are suspected of trying to get Maria Yovanovych to resign from the post of ambassador to Kiev in the interests of a certain Ukrainian official. Shortly after his arrest Parnassus was released on bail and was allowed to leave his home only to attend court hearings, meet with his lawyer and participate in religious rituals.
Giuliani was in the spotlight in the media after a major scandal broke out in Washington in September over allegations that Trump had pressured Zelensky during a phone call to encourage Kiev to help the head of the Washington administration to be re-elected for a second term in 2020. It has been suggested that the U.S. leader, with Giuliani’s assistance, was seeking an investigation from his Ukrainian counterpart into the actions of the son of former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden in exchange for financial and military assistance to Kiev. The House of Representatives of Congress, controlled by the Democratic Party, announced on the basis of such suspicions the launch of impeachment proceedings against Republican Trump.
Biden is now one of Trump’s most likely rivals in the upcoming November 2020 presidential elections.