U.S. President Trump ordered the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine after months of complaints from allies outside the administration, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that she was undermining him abroad and obstructing efforts to persuade Kyiv to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
Trump’s personal lawyer Giuliani told the newspaper that Yovanovitch was biased against the U.S. president in private conversations and prevented Ukraine from conducting an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter.
In addition, the newspaper reports that Giuliani handed over to the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a nine-page document dated March 28 containing a schedule of Biden’s business meetings in Ukraine.
The document also claimed that Yovanovitch was very close to the former vice president.
It is noted that although the U.S. Department of State presented Yovanovitch’s departure from Ukraine in May as planned, her tenure as ambassador was three months shorter than the usual three-year term.
Earlier, U.S. media reported that Trump tried in a telephone conversation on July 25 to convince Zelensky of the need to launch an investigation against Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.
An American intelligence officer complained in writing, and members of the U.S. Congress received the complaint for review. The complaint of intelligence officer statement prompted Democrats in the House of Representatives to initiate impeachment hearings against Trump.
In addition to U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch, democrats also requested State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, State Department counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland appear for depositions at the Congress.
On Thursday, Trump explicitly called on Ukraine and China to launch investigations into the activities of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and his companies.
