House panel says key witness isn’t cooperating in probe into Yovanovitch surveillance

The House Foreign Affairs Committee said Monday that a GOP congressional candidate who claimed to have the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under surveillance is not cooperating with the committee’s requests for information.

Messages obtained by NBC News between the committee and Robert Hyde, a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Connecticut, detail the committee’s displeasure with Hyde’s assertion in interviews that he had fully cooperated with the committee and claimed that significant gaps existed in records he provided to the committee.

Hyde’s connections with Lev Parnas and other associates of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer and chief operative involved in his efforts to dig up dirt on his political opponents in Ukraine, were key to the now-shuttered impeachment inquiry targeting President Trump. 

He is also now at the center of the Foreign Affairs committee’s probe into the State Department‘s response to alleged threats against Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine seen by Trump allies as an obstacle into their efforts against former Vice President Joe Biden (D) and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine.

Text messages obtained by lawmakers found that Hyde provided Parnas with detailed information about Yovanovitch’s whereabouts in Ukraine. 

In the emails obtained by NBC, Hyde responds to the committee’s requests for more information and demands that he be allowed to watch while investigators reviewed his electronic devices, citing alleged corruption in the FBI.

“I’m a nobody that has come from nothing and that loves his country. I’M NOT SURE HOW OR WHY I’M BEING USED IN THIS HOAX OR WHATEVER YOU CALL IT. But it’s disgusting trying to set me up. I submitted everything I have,” Hyde wrote in one email.

“[I]t’s starting to become apparent that you and the FBI is trying to set me up with false or fake evidence” aimed at hurting his congressional bid, Hyde added.

A spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs committee declined to comment to NBC on the messages.