House releases testimony of top State Department official

Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, is also slated to testify on the first day of open hearings in the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday, along with William Taylor, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

In emails included in a packet of documents given to Congress by the State Department’s inspector general in early October, Kent expressed concerns about the campaign to discredit Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. In March, he called the emerging effort a “fake news driven smear out of Ukraine” and a “classic disinformation operation.”

Read the full text of Kent’s testimony here

In his opening statement, Kent told lawmakers he shared Yovanovitch’s concerns “that the U.S. Government chose to move an ambassador based, as best she [can] tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives, at an especially challenging time in our bilateral [relations] with a newly elected Ukrainian President,” according to the transcript.

Yovanovitch was recalled from her post three months early after numerous Trump allies, most notably Rudy Giuliani, waged a campaign for her removal.