JUST IN: State Dept. FOIA Doc Release Shows Links Between Oval Office, Giuliani, and Pompeo on Ukraine

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had multiple conversations in March 2019 with President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, after the latter complained to Trump’s then-Oval Office operations director that he was getting nowhere “through regular channels.”

These revelations come from a 100-page trove of State Department documents released on Friday to the nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight. The documents, which were part of a FOIA lawsuit for all Trump administration dealings on Ukraine, include multiple emails of Pompeo’s call schedule, showing the nation’s top diplomat holding calls with Giuliani. (The documents can also be viewed here).

In addition to call logs showing Giuliani and Pompeo speaking several times, there is a March 27 email from Giuliani’s personal assistant, Jo Ann Zafonte, to then-Director of Oval Office Operations Madeleine Westerhout, who acted as Trump’s unofficial gatekeeper in the White House. Zafonte requests a phone number for Pompeo so she can set up a call between him and Giuliani because she has “been trying and getting nowhere through regular channels.”

In addition, the State Dept. release includes a April 12, 2019 letter to Pompeo from two Democratic Congressman, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer and House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel, in which they express their concern over the “outrageous efforts by Ukrainian officials to impugn the efforts” of then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

“It is disappointing that certain political actors within Ukraine have criticized Ambassador Yovanovitch, given her focus on anti-corruption efforts that touch on their interests,” Hoyer and Engel note. The pair go on to urge Pompeo to “make public statements personally defending your team and those who represent our country from these spurious disparagements.”

Pompeo never did offer a public show of support for Yovanovitch.

“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress,” American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers said in a press release about the document dump. “It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a US ambassador.”

Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post by Pompeo in May 2019, just weeks after the calls between Giuliani and Pompeo. She recently testified to Congress that her loyalty to the president was directly questioned while she was still assigned to Kyiv and that she was the subject of a right-wing smear campaign pushed by Giuliani and other Trump acolytes this past spring, the same time period that Giuliani was in communication with Pompeo.

“That American Oversight could obtain these documents establishes that there is no legal basis for the administration to withhold them from Congress,” Evers added. The State Department has repeatedly delayed and even defied a subpoena from House Democrats who have demanded the agency turn over any documents pertinent to its investigation into the Trump White House’s conduct toward Ukraine. “That conclusively shows that the administration is engaged in obstruction of justice. The president and his allies should ask themselves if impeachment for obstruction is worth it if the strategy isn’t even going to be effective.”