By Tom Porter
Messages in which a GOP candidate suggested to Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas that he had placed Marie Yovanovitch, then-US ambassador to Ukraine, under surveillance, were released Tuesday.
They introduced a new player into the Ukraine scandal — a GOP congressional candidate in Connecticut named Robert Hyde — whom lawyers for Parnas told media outlets was the man behind the messages.
Before the release of Tuesday’s batch of messages Hyde was best known for sending an obscene message to former Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, on Twitter.
The message, which has since been deleted, saw Hyde make a crude joke about Harris and oral sex after she dropped out of the presidential race in December 2019.
Democrats and top Republicans urged him to withdraw from the race over the message.
While he deleted that particular tweet, a review of Hyde’s Twitter feed shows he has long taken a hardline pro-Trump stance, distributing pro-Trump conspiracies, and singling out Yovanovitch in attacks.
In a message sent during Yovanovitch’s impeachment testimony in November, where she described being warned to leave Ukraine over threats to her security, he described her as a “traitor” and “scumbag.”
He also shared list of smears about her, including that she worked for Jewish financier George Soros, a favorite far-right trope.
Yovanovitch’s attorneys have called for a formal investigation to be launched into the messages.