Yovanovitch previously claimed she was the victim of a smear campaign which saw her accused of presenting Ukranian officials with a “do not prosecute” list, protecting certain individuals from corruption investigations.
During her testimony at the impeachment inquiry, Yovanovitch dismissed the allegations as a “fabrication,” adding that “Lutsenko, who made that allegation, has acknowledged that the list never existed.”
She also claimed she had never told Lutsenko or any other Ukrainian officials who they should or should not prosecute before she was abruptly removed from her role as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Furthermore, Lutsenko claims Yovanovitch “blocked” Ukrainian prosecutors from working with U.S. officials to address significant corruption in Ukraine.
Lutsenko said that Yovanovitch had visited him in his office for a “small negotiation” during which she asked him to “change some old deputies.”
The former prosecutor-general said Yovanovitch asked him to close the case of one person. He replied that it was “impossible” to “close any case without investigation.”
“So I took a piece of paper on my table and I write these three, not cases, but surnames, Kasko, Leshchenko, Shabunin,” he said.
Lutsenko recalled how he then told Yovanovitch to continue with her “untouchable list” and she questioned why he was being “so serious.”
He claims he then destroyed the list and told her: “While I am general prosecutor, no president nor ambassador could give me ... could announce me such lists.”
One of the organizations on Yovanovitch’s list was the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a group jointly funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars and a foundation belonging to billionaire financier George Soros.
Lutsenko said that Yovanovitch immediately ran out of his office following this incident and he did not “agree to receive any orders to open or to close criminal cases.”
He added: “Our interpreter made a small mistake. He said in Ukrainian ‘ona ozvuchila.’ She announced [told] me surnames, but my interpreter said he, as far as I remember, gave me a list. So announced and [or] to gave [give] certainly [there] is a difference and Yovanovitch now used this mistake of [the] interpreter to speak [claim] that there was no such story.
“Yes, there was no list. But, there was announced [announcement] of three surnames,” he concluded.
The former prosecutor general said the letter proved he wanted to discuss claims of significant corruption in Ukraine with U.S. officials.
“So she [has] been under oath, she declare [declared] in the Congress that I never sent any information. This is [the] official letter about [the] topic I wanted to discuss in [with] the U.S. and Yovanovitch blocked me. She never answered me after this request and she lied in Congress. This is the evidence,” he said.
The impeachment inquiry against Trump began last month and is being led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
Trump is accused by Democrats of pressuring Ukraine to dig up damaging information on one of his main Democratic challengers for the presidency in 2020, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. He is also accused of withholding $400 million of military aid to Ukraine.
To date, the evidence of a connection between the request for investigations into the Bidens and the hold on aid consists of hearsay and presumptions.
“American foreign policy is what the president determined it to be, not what the ‘consensus’ of unelected foreign policy bureaucrats wants it to be. If any bureaucrats disagree with the president, they should use their powers of persuasion within their legal chain of command to get the president to agree with their viewpoint,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee.
“In the end, if they are unable to carry out the policy of the president, they should resign. They should not seek to undermine the policy by leaking to people outside their chain of command.”
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