During the morning break in Friday’s House Intelligence Committee impeachment inquiry hearing, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum attempted to relaunch part of the right-wing smear campaign against the day’s big witness, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch: that she had presented Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko with a list of people to not prosecute -- a claim which Lutsenko has already recanted.
On America’s Newsroom, MacCallum said, “There is some suggestions that the word ‘list’ is what is not very accurate here, but that the sentiment behind the idea that there were people that they didn't want prosecuted may bear out. And we'll see what the Republicans', you know, line of questioning does to establish any of that, if it's there.”
President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and The Hill columnist John Solomon (now also a Fox News contributor) had circulated the allegation, which Donald Trump Jr. also pushed, accusing Yovanovitch of presenting Ukrainian officials with a list of individuals and business that they should not prosecute.
MacCallum appears to be trying to alter the allegation itself, to say it wasn’t necessarily about an actual “list,” but rather a general urging in spirit. Contrary to her assertion, though, a “list” was indeed said to have existed, and a photo of this purported document even circulated online. But as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent previously told the Intelligence Committee, this supposed copy of the “list” was a very sloppy forgery to which his own business card had been attached:
