More alleged evidence surfaces of former U.S. ambassador being tracked

The U.S. House
Judiciary Committee released a new tranche of evidence on Jan. 17 on the
alleged surveillance of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. It
includes text messages sent between Trump loyalist and Congressional candidate
Robert Hyde and an unidentified Belgian source, indicating that they had been
tracking the movements of Yovanovitch. “Um, it’s confirmed she’s in Ukraine,”
said the Belgian source, with a possible Eastern European accent, in a brief
audio message to Hyde, as reported by the dailymail.co.uk news site. “Awesome,”
Hyde responded, who released on Jan. 17 a lengthy video brushing off claims of
surveillance, while also acknowledging he got information about Yovanovitch
from a source. Later, the person writing from Belgium wrote another message to
Hyde from a different Belgian contact or the person changed their WhatsApp
profile picture. The full number was blacked out. “Nothing has changed. She is
still moving,” the person wrote Hyde, who was visited at his home by FBI
officials this week.

The National Police
of Ukraine on Jan. 16 opened two criminal cases on evidence produced by
investigations of the U.S. House of Representatives on the possible illegal
tracking of former ambassador Yovanovitch, as reported by Ukraine’s Internal
Affairs Ministry on its website. The cases involve the alleged crimes of
violating confidential correspondences and the illegal collection and use of
confidential information in violation of a person’s privacy. The U.S. House
Judicial Committee began publishing evidence on Jan. 14 that Yovanovitch was
possibly tracked illegally and electronic gadgets accessed illegally at the
order of U.S. citizens. Recordings released so far indicate “the possible
violation of Ukraine’s legislation and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic
Relations, which protects the rights of diplomats on the territory of another
state”,
said Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, adding that it has asked the FBI to
provide all information on those who could have been involved. 

Zenon Zawada: With
Ukraine’s Foreign
Ministry already indicating it
doesn’t want to ruffle the feathers of the White House, we believe the
Ukrainian investigation won’t gain much traction and was opened for the sake of
protocol. Ukrainian investigators will largely rely on the work of American law
enforcement officers, who will be drawing the main conclusions.