Giuliani Confirms Smear Campaign Against Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch: I Just Needed Her “Out Of The Way”

From a New Yorker profile of Yuriy Lutsenko, the disgraced former prosecutor general of Ukraine:

In a long conversation with me this past November, Giuliani largely confirmed Lutsenko’s account of their relationship. He, too, saw Yovanovitch as an obstacle, hindering his attempt to dig up dirt against his client’s rival in advance of the 2020 election.

“I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he said. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”

Giuliani compiled a dossier on the Bidens and Yovanovitch, which he sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and which was shared with the F.B.I. and with me.

John Solomon, a journalist, had interviewed Lutsenko for the Washington-based publication The Hill. Giuliani promoted the project. “I said, ‘John, let’s make this as prominent as possible,’ ” Giuliani told me. “ ‘I’ll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.’ ”

“I needed Yovanovitch out of the way. She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody,” Giuliani said of his scheme to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. https://t.co/wFhDSmc6cb

— Adam Entous (@adamentous) December 16, 2019

Giuliani promised Lutsenko a meeting with Attorney General Barr. When Giuliani realized that setting up the meeting could get him in trouble, he decided instead to launch a smear campaign using pro-Trump media to pressure DoJ/FBI to investigate the Bidens https://t.co/wFhDSmc6cb

— Adam Entous (@adamentous) December 16, 2019

… At one point, Rudy even tells the New Yorker reporter it might have been Joe Biden, not Russia, who hacked the DNC computers, and that Biden arranged $40 million in illegal donations from Ukrainian oligarchs to Hillary. (I bet Trump is hearing the same shit, but believes it.)

— Jay Bookman (@jaysbookman) December 16, 2019