The former US ambassador to Ukraine said that Rudy Giuliani was a dirt-digger for former President Donald Trump and worked with corrupt actors in Ukraine to oust her.
During the first impeachment inquiry, Marie Yovanovitch testified about some of these details, which focused on his efforts to pressure the Ukrainian president into publicly announcing investigations targeting the Bidens while withholding vital military aid and a White House meeting.
In her book, "Lessons From The Edge," Yovanovitch outlines how a corrupt former top prosecutor in Ukraine used Giuliani as a tool to spread misinformation in the US.
She said that Giuliani wanted to paint Joe Biden as corrupt in order to undermine his candidacy in the 2020 election. The tale of lies and half-truths was created by Lutsenko to get Giuliani.
She goes on to detail how Biden ordered the firing of a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him from investigating the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, whose board Biden's son, Hunter, worked on. Yovanovitch writes that the opposite was true.
The entire donor community came to believe that Shokin was corrupt and needed to go because he was not actively investigating corruption at Burisma.
The book said that Giuliani and Lutsenko wanted to get Yovanovitch fired from her post as Ukraine ambassador because they had a vendetta against her.
She said that Giuliani wrongly believed that Yovanovitch was responsible for denying a US visa for Shokin, who he wanted to meet with as part of his quest to dig up dirt on the Bidens. Yovanovitch, along with other nonpartisan US officials, had described him as a corrupt prosecutor-general working to advance his own interests.
The former ambassador writes in her book that she was not worried because Americans had never been involved in the campaign.
She said that anyone considering such an effort would never have gotten close enough to have an impact.
Yovanovitch writes that she was not deterred from her work in Ukraine despite the efforts of Giuliani and Lutsenko. She said that she was uneasy about the effects their actions had on Washington, DC.
The book said that I knew that Giuliani and Lutsenko wanted me to be fired. The idea that a disgruntled foreign official or a president could manipulate the US government to act against a sitting ambassador was not right.
She was fired from her ambassadorship after Giuliani and Lutsenko succeeded in defaming her.
Yovanovitch was a foreign service officer. She was catapulted into the headlines in the year 2019, when House Democrats launched Trump's first impeachment regarding his efforts to strongarm Ukraine into doing his bidding while withholding security assistance and a White House meeting.
Yovanovitch was ousted before the end of her term due to political forces in the US and Ukraine.
She said that she was shocked and devastated when she learned of the July call between Trump and Zelenskyy, in which Trump pressured Zelenskyy to investigate the Bidens.
Legal experts said that Trump's attacks against Yovanovitch amounted to witness intimidation.
Yovanovitch said they were very intimidating when asked to respond.
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