Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, communicated personally with a Democratic congressional staffer about a "quite delicate" and "time-sensitive" issue through her personal email account, even though she testified that she did not respond personally, according to copies of the emails obtained by Fox News.
The email exchanges took place two days after a whistleblower complaint that kickstarted the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump was filed, and a month before it became public, according to copies of the emails obtained by Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
Yovanovitch testified during her Capitol Hill deposition in October that she'd gotten an email from the staffer, Laura Carey, but did not respond to it.
Yovanovitch testified while talking about Carey's initial email, sent Aug. 14, that she'd alerted the State Department, as she is still an employee, "and she emailed me again" and asked, "who should I be in touch with?"
Yovanovitch testified that to the best of her knowledge, someone at the "Legislative Affairs Office" at the State Department responded to Carey, and testified that she didn't respond to Carey's follow-up email.
However, according to the emails obtained by the Tucker Carlson program, Yovanovitch responded to Carey's initial email, saying she would "love to reconnect and look forward to chatting with you."
She also said that she had "let EUR [the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs] know that you are interested in talking and they will be in touch with you shortly."
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., told Fox News it is "greatly concerning" that the former ambassador may have testified incorrectly about responding personally to Carey's email.
"I would highly suspect that this Democratic staffer's work was connected in some way to the whistleblower's effort, which has evolved into this impeachment charade," Zeldin said.
A spokesperson for the Democratic House Foreign Affairs committee said the outreach was related to Trump's order to recall Yovanovitch from her post over allegations of partisanship and bias.