State Dept. official describes frantic effort to save recalled Ukraine ambassador

Source: The Hill | November 26, 2019 | Mike Lillis and Olivia Beavers

A top State Department official told impeachment investigators in newly released testimony about a frantic but unsuccessful effort among senior diplomats to save the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine from a politically motivated smear campaign launched by allies of President Trump.

Philip Reeker, acting assistant secretary of European and Eurasian Affairs, testified privately last month that a “media storm” of negative but “highly inaccurate” stories targeting Marie Yovanovitch led to her recall from Kyiv in May, even as veteran State officials sought “a formal statement from the department” in her defense.

“There would be no statement,” Reeker told investigators, according to a transcript of his testimony released Tuesday by Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry into Trump. “We would continue to use the press guidance that we had that had been cleared.”

While his Oct. 26 testimony contained few new details surrounding the campaign to oust Yovanovitch, it supported the narrative delivered by a number of other veteran diplomats testifying in the impeachment investigation who have painted a graphic picture of efforts by Trump’s allies — led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani — to go after Yovanovitch, a career diplomat described by Reeker as “one of the foreign service great leaders.”

“There was a lot of unhappiness – without anything explicit, because we were speaking on open lines – there was unhappiness from the White House that Ambassador Yovanovitch was still there, and the belief that she needed to come back,” Reeker testified, relaying a conversation with State Department counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl in April.

Reeker testified that the public effort to target Yovanovitch began weeks earlier with a column from John Solomon, a conservative opinion writer formerly with The Hill, who had interviewed Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s top prosecutor at the time. Lutsenko told Solomon that Yovanovitch had given him a list of figures he was not to prosecute, even as U.S. policy sought to rein in corruption in a country well known for it.

Both Yovanovitch and the State Department have denied the allegation, and Lutsenko has since walked it back.

Reeker dismissed it as an outright fabrication.

“He ultimately recanted that,” Reeker said of Lutsenko. “There was never anything to suggest this.”

Nonetheless, the charge caught fire in the conservative press, attracting the attention of Trump’s allies and stirring more stories in the right-wing media. Reeker said Yovanovitch’s ouster later in May was a blow to the department’s anti-corruption efforts on the whole.

“Ambassador Yovanovitch was subjected to just really outrageous press coverage and innuendo and threats coming from high levels, retweeting irresponsible journalism, which affected her personally, her safety, affected our mission, reflected on the United States, and it was pretty outrageous,” he said.

…….

Reeker testified that it was the “understanding” of the State Department that the hold on military aid had originated with Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, and that Giuliani was fueling the narrative that Kyiv was undeserving of the funds by “feeding the president a lot of very negative views about Ukraine.”

“What we sensed was a very negative stream coming from Mr. Giuliani to the president,” he said.

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