New documents show that President Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, put
Rudy Giuliani in touch with
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in March, during the time-frame of events that are at the center of the House impeachment inquiry. The revelation was contained in a 100-page series of documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request filed by
American Oversight, a non-partisan watchdog group. The documents reveal that Jo Ann Zafonte, Giuliani’s assistant, emailed Westerhout on March 27 to ask for Pompeo's contact information, starting a backchannel that House investigators contend subverted normal foreign policy protocols. Giuliani and Pompeo spoke a day before Zafonte’s email on March 26, and then again on March 29. The conversations took place in the context of Giuliani's initiative to oust then-U.S. Ambassador to
Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Giuliani told the Wall Street Journal that he had reached out to Pompeo to express his concerns about the ambassador. When Pompeo asked Giuliani if he had anything in writing, Giuliani responded, “God almighty I have a lot of stuff in writing.” Giuliani told the Journal that he sent Pompeo a nine-page document on March 28, which included allegations of wrongdoing by Yovanovitch and also that she was “very close” to former Vice President Joe Biden.
President Trump and Giuliani were the masterminds behind an initiative that aimed to push Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, efforts that led to the impeachment inquiry this fall.