Connecticut GOP chair asked congressional candidate linked to possible Yovanovitch surveillance to drop out of race

(Image credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

published 15 January 2020

Is the future of Robert Hyde's Connecticut congressional campaign in jeopardy? The state's GOP Chair J.R. Romano certainly hopes so.

Hyde, who's running as a Republican, was implicated Tuesday by new evidence that Lev Parnas, an associate of President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, handed over to the House Intelligence Committee. Parnas is known for aiding Giuliani in his quest to pressure Ukraine into investigating Trump's domestic rivals, and was subpoenaed by Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Under circumstances that aren't entirely clear, Hyde found his way into the saga. The evidence shows a series of text messages between Parnas and Hyde, in which Hyde uses crude language to describe former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch before indicating he had a contact in Kyiv track her movements. The revelation caused quite a stir, and Yovanovitch's camp wants an investigation into the matter.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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