Politico from January 2017 that goes into extensive detail about the machinations by various Ukrainians and Americans in connection with the Clinton and Trump campaigns the previous year. The second is a March 20, 2019, article in The Hill regarding an interview and statements made by then-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko about Yovanovitch, who was then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. The third is a New York Times story on May 9, 2019 about Giuliani’s plans to travel to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky, then president-elect, to urge Ukrainian legal inquiries into the origins of the special counsel’s investigation and Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma. Several of the witnesses who were deposed by House committees involved in the impeachment inquiry and who testified publicly were asked aboutthe full circumstances. When she reported the Avakov conversation back to the State Department, nobody with whom she communicated there quite understood what was going on either. Yovanovitch testified that she first heard from Ukrainian officials at the end of 2018 that Lutsenko was in communication with Giuliani; her understanding was that Lutsenko and Giuliani had a number of meetings and that Lutsenko was looking to “hurt her” in the United States, though she did not understand why.

State Department official George Kent testified to learning that Giuliani was actively engaged in Ukraine policy in May 2018, when Lutsenko had planned to go to New York to meet with Giuliani. Kent recounted learning that on May 9, 2018, Parnas and Fruman met with former Rep. Pete Sessions, and afterward