Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the State Department will do everything possible to determine whether former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was threatened in Kiev. The statement was made following the release of documents claiming that Ukraine-born American citizen Lev Parnas was involved in surveilling the envoy's movements prior to her dismissal from the post in May 2019, Reuters reported.
"We will do everything we need to do to evaluate whether there was something that took place there", Pompeo said during a radio interview with Tony Katz.
The secretary of state added that he expected that the allegations would turn out to be wrong in the end, but a probe into the matter was still necessary.
"I suspect that much of what’s been reported will ultimately prove wrong, but our obligation, my obligation as secretary of state, is to make sure that we evaluate, investigate. Any time there is someone who posits that there may have been a risk to one of our officers, we’ll obviously do that", Pompeo said.
On 14 January, congressional Democrats released documents alleging that Yovanovitch’s movements were being monitored during her time in Kiev by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Yovanovitch, who was abruptly recalled from her post back in May 2019, earlier testified she had been warned by Washington to urgently return to the US due to concerns for her safety, with the released documents also claiming that there might have been a threat to her life back in spring of last year.