reached out to the secretary of the interior in late january or early february to talk about vice president biden and the 2016 election. that s certainly long before the phone call and before president zelensky s election. at that time around february, avicov expressed concerns to yavonovitch that getting into u.s. politics would be a dangerous place for ukraine to be. here is the testimony. question: what were his concerns as expressed to you? yavonovitch: he thought this was so he thought it was very dangerous that ukraine since its independence has had bipartisan support from both democrats and republicans all these years, and to start kind of getting into u.s. politics and u.s. domestic politics was a dangerous place for ukraine to be. question: why did he think he would be getting into u.s. domestic politics by speaking with mr. giuliani? and marie yavonovitch said, well, because he told me that,
politically at the same time as vital military aid for ukraine had been withheld. we re learning a lot more about the former ukranian ambassador, marie yavonovitch, someone who had been sitting in that position for some time and had been targeted by rudy giuliani, rudy giuliani launching a smear campaign to try to oust her from that post. the president himself had raised her name, singled her out in that infamous july phone call with president zelensky of ukraine. according to that rough transcript, she s named in there and she s asked about the president singling her out and the phone call. this is what she says, according to the transcript. she s asked, at the top of page 4, the former ambassador from the united states, the woman was bad news and the people she was dealing with in ukraine were bad news, so i just want to let you know that. when asked what was your reaction when you saw that? yavonovitch replied, i hate to be repetitive but i was shocked.
the constitution and why. and we have senior correspondent evan perez. let s talk about the timeline first, right? so, evan, we ve heard this timeline of as far back as february, you had giuliani talking about the bidens, and we ve also learned from this transcript that giuliani was talking to ukranian officials, really, into late 2018 as well. right. this is marie yavonovitch s testimony in her deposition. she says in late 2018 is the first time she learns that rudy giuliani is running this shadow campaign behind her back, essentially trying to smear her. it appears that there are other people in ukraine who want her gone. and keep in mind, she viewed one of the most important parts of her job fighting corruption in ukraine. there were certain people in ukraine who were not happy about what exactly she was doing. so the smear campaign took off and certainly got to the president s ear.
right? so in that regard, their roles aligned. i do want to read something from marie yavonovitch. this is one of the excerpts. the question was, and from your staff members or your own conversations, what did you come to learn about mr. giuliani s interest in ukraine? she responds, that basically there had been a number of meetings between mr. lasenko and mayor giuliani and they were looking i should say mr. lasenko was looking to hurt me in the u.s. koi i couldn t imagine what that was but now i see. the question was, what do you see now? she answered, well, i m no longer in ukraine. lasenko was the attorney general. the complaints by not only the united states and europeans and groups inside ukraine was that essentially he was corrupt, that he was sometimes targeting people, bringing cases against
we re back now with our top story, the release of transcripts in the house impeachment inquiry, and marie yavonovitch said she was shocked when she heard about the phone call between the president and president zelensky, and she summoned the state department to protect her. kaitlan collins is on the hill. i know you just got these transcripts. tell us what you know. one of the notable things is the state department issued a statement supporting her as she was koccoming under attack by