“It did come up at some point with the secretary,” David Hale said. “I understood that he did call Sean Hannity.”
David Hale, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said in his closed-door impeachment testimony that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Fox News host Sean Hannity last spring to ask about the smear campaign launched against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, according to a transcript that was made public Monday night.
Discussing efforts by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and pro-Trump media to besmirch the reputation of Yovanovitch ahead of her ouster as ambassador, Hale noted that Pompeo spoke to Giuliani twice in late March regarding the allegations.
At the time, conservative columnist John Solomon had reported that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said Yovanovitch had given him a “do not prosecute list.” (Lutsenko would later walk back that claim.)
View the complete November 18 article by Justin Baragona on the Daily Beast website here.