President Trump ordered the State Department to recall U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Ukraine in the spring, months before her scheduled departure, "after months of complaints from allies outside the administration, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that she was undermining him abroad and obstructing efforts to persuade Kyiv to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden," The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday. Giuliani told the Journal and CNN that he had complained about Yovanovitch to Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
According to Giuliani, "he reminded the president of complaints percolating among Trump supporters that she had displayed an anti-Trump bias in private conversations," the Journal reports. "In Giuliani's view, she also had been an obstacle to efforts to push Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter." A person familiar with the matter told the Journal that "Yovanovitch's removal was a priority for the president," and Pompeo supported the move. State Department officials tried to counter the baseless theories spread by Giuliani, but they were told "they couldn't shield her from attacks by the president and his allies," the Journal adds.
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