A former top prosecutor in Ukraine has accused former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch of committing perjury before Congress during sworn testimony given at President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry.
In an exclusive with One America News Network, former Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko disputed Yovanovitch’s claim that she was the victim of a smear campaign in which she was accused of presenting Ukrainian officials with a “do not prosecute” list, which protected certain individuals from corruption probes.
During her testimony at the impeachment inquiry, Yovanovitch dismissed those allegations as a “fabrication,” adding that “Lutsenko, who made that allegation, has acknowledged that the list never existed.”
In addition, Yovanovitch claimed she never told Lutsenko or any other officials in Ukraine who they could and could not prosecute before she was abruptly removed from her post by President Trump over the summer.
But in his interview with OANN, Lutsenko claimed that the former U.S. ambassador was not truthful regarding her narrative to Congress about her request to block his investigations.
Additionally, the former prosecutor general said that Yovanovitch “blocked” Ukrainian prosecutors from working with American officials to battle significant corruption in Ukraine.
Lutsenko said that Yovanovitch also visited him in his office for a “small negotiation” during which she asked him to “change some old deputies.”
He noted further that the former U.S. diplomat also requested that he close the case of one person, though he replied that it was “impossible” to “close any case without investigation.”
The former prosecutor-general said Yovanovitch asked him to close the case of one person. He replied that it was “impossible” to “close any case without investigation.”
“So I took a piece of paper on my table and I write these three, not cases, but surnames, Kasko, Leshchenko, Shabunin,” he told OANN.
Lutsenko recalled how he then told Yovanovitch to continue with her “untouchable list” but that she asked why he was being “so serious.”
He said he then destroyed the list and told her, “While I am general prosecutor, no president nor ambassador could give me … could announce me such lists.”
One of the organizations on the American diplomat’s list, according to Lutsenko, was the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a group jointly funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars and a foundation belonging to billionaire financier George Soros.
Lutsenko said that Yovanovitch immediately ran out of his office following the incident after he did not “agree to receive any orders to open or to close criminal cases.”
The former prosecutor general also presented evidence in the form of a letter he sent to Yovanovitch requesting U.S. assistance in rooting out corruption in his country.
However, during her testimony, she claimed that he never made any such request.
“So she [has] been under oath, she declare [declared] in the Congress that I never sent any information. This is [the] official letter about [the] topic I wanted to discuss in [with] the U.S. and Yovanovitch blocked me. She never answered me after this request and she lied in Congress. This is the evidence,” he said.
Telling lots of lies? Sounds like a Democrat partisan to me.