Rudy Giuliani recently admitted he "needed" to get former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch "out of the way" in order to more easily dig for dirt in Ukraine on President Donald Trump's political rivals, confirming a key allegation at the heart of the impeachment proceedings.
Giuliani, who acted as Trump's point man in a hunt for compromising information on Joe Biden this past spring, said Yovanovitch posed an obstacle in his push for Ukraine to launch investigations of the former vice president's family and a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory about the 2016 election.
"I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way," Giuliani told The New Yorker in a November interview that was published Monday. "She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."
Giuliani went on to compile a dossier filled with dubious claims about Yovanovitch that he turned over to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other administration officials while advocating for her removal.
The former New York City mayor also worked hand-in-hand with John Solomon, a conservative journalist for The Hill, to smear Yovanovitch.
"I said, 'John, let's make this as prominent as possible,'" Giuliani said. "'I'll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.'"
The ex-mayor was in large part relying on misinformation about Yovanovitch peddled by Yuri Lutsenko, Ukraine's former top prosecutor, who has been described by impeachment inquiry witnesses as self-serving and corrupt.
Acting on Giuliani's smear, Trump abruptly yanked Yovanovitch from her post in April. The president's defenders have maintained he has the right to recall ambassadors at will.
Speaking to the New York Daily News on Monday, Giuliani claimed he had good reason for wanting Yovanovitch gone.
"I had witnesses and now documentary proof that she was denying visas to Ukrainians wanting to come to U.S. and testify about Ukrainian collusion with DNC, Biden bribery ... massive money laundering with U.S. institutions," Giuliani said, referring to the unsubstantiated allegations Trump wanted President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate.
Yovanovitch testified during her sworn appearance in the impeachment inquiry last month that she recommended the denial of a U.S. visa to Viktor Shokin, another sketchy ex-Ukrainian prosecutor, because of his history of "corrupt activities," not because he wanted to testify about some uncorroborated right-wing theories.
Giuliani, who recently returned from Europe after searching for more dirt on Trump's political opponents, also took information from Shokin as part of his Ukraine scheme.
Yovanovitch did not return a request for comment on Monday.
