The White House has accidentally sent talking points related to former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s deposition to House Democrats for the second time within a month.
The memo is meant to provide guidance to Republicans for their responses to any potentially damaging information coming out of Yovanovitch’s testimony on Friday. A copy of the document, obtained by numerous media outlets, is currently circulating online.
“We are not concerned with any information Yovanovitch might share, because the president did nothing wrong. But we are concerned that [Adam] Schiff is putting her in a precarious position by having her testify in secret without State Department lawyers present,” one of the points in the memo states.
“Only State Department lawyers would be able to provide Yovanovitch with the correct counsel on what is classified or privileged and without that counsel there is serious danger that she could breach her obligations as a current employee not to reveal such information without authorization,” the memo continues.
“It raises serious questions about why Schiff is willing to put career officials in such risky situations while bullying them with legally unfounded threats of obstruction charges,” it added.
The State Department issued a statement at the time that called Lutsenko’s claim about the do-not-prosecute “an outright fabrication.” Lutsenko later retracted his accusations about the list.
Yovanovitch took the opportunity to deny the accusations during her testimony on Friday. She said she had not spoken to Hunter Biden and had only spoken to Joe Biden several times over the course of many years in government. She said during that time neither he or the previous administration raised the issue of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma or Hunter Biden.
Meanwhile, Yovanovitch was mentioned in the call between Trump and Zelensky, where Trump described her as “bad news.” Zelensky agreed with Trump during the call, saying: “It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100 percent. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous president and was on his side. She would not accept me as a new president well enough.”