Judicial Watch Sues for Documents Related to Former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s Alleged Intervention with Ukraine Prosecutor

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department seeking documents related to a reported “untouchables list” given in late 2016 by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.

Lutsenko recently told The New York Times that Yovanovitch “pressed him not to prosecute anti-corruption activists.” Lutsenko previously reportedly said the do-not-prosecute list included a founder of the Ukraine group Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC), which was funded by George Soros foundations and the U.S. federal government, and two members of the Ukrainian Parliament who vocally supported the Soros group’s agenda:

The implied message to Ukraine’s prosecutors was clear: Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama, Ukrainian officials said.

Recently, Rudy Giuliani stated that AntAC “was co-funded by the Obama administration and far-left billionaire financier George Soros,” and “was ironically under investigation for alleged corruption, namely a ‘misplaced’ $4.4 million in U.S. funds designated to ‘fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic,’ during the 2016 presidential election in America.”

Amb. Yovanovitch, who was recalled from her Ukraine post in May of this year by President Donald Trump, was a key witness for Democrats last month in their public impeachment hearings. Yovanovitch denied providing any do-not-prosecute “list.”

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the State Department failed to respond to a September 24, 2019, FOIA request (Judicial Watch vs. U.S. Department of State) (No. 1:19-cv-03563) seeking:

• All records of communication between the Department of State and any representative of the Ukrainian government regarding any actual or proposed investigation or prosecution of the AntAC; the International Renaissance Foundation [Open Society Foundations’ office in Ukraine]; and/or Transparency International.
• All records concerning any meeting or telephonic conversation between former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
• All records related to the list of individuals and entities provided to Lutsenko by Yovanovitch in late 2016.

“Reports suggest that the Ukrainian Embassy was a hotbed of anti-Trump, Deep State activism and tried to promote and protect leftist allies in Ukraine and the United States,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “As the coup attack on President Trump continues, this new federal lawsuit is designed to get to the real truth of the Deep State’s games in Ukraine.”

On October 9, 2019, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request for State Department records related to the possibly illegal collection of information by Yovanovitch on prominent conservative figures, journalists and persons with ties to President Donald Trump.

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