SHOCKED, SHOCKED:

An ethics group late Friday published nearly 100 pages of previously unreleased State Department documents that the group says shows "a clear paper trail" between President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before a Ukraine ambassador was abruptly recalled. [...]

The documents released Friday appear to confirm that Pompeo and Giuliani spoke on the phone on March 26, and that another call was scheduled between the two men for March 29 and that it took place.

One email appears to show Trump's former personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, helping to connect Giuliani to Pompeo after there was trouble establishing a connection.

The documents do not say what Giuliani and Pompeo discussed. The March 29 call was scheduled for 20 minutes but lasted just four minutes, according to the documents, and the March 26 call was also just minutes long, the emails show.

A request for comment from the State Department was not immediately returned after the documents were released late Friday.

The emails also show that before the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, took the job he was among six former Ukraine ambassadors who objected to "recent uncorroborated allegations" about Yovanovitch.

The April letter from Taylor and the five others says, "these charges are simply wrong."

Taylor told Congress he was asked to return to lead the embassy in Kyiv in May by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In his testimony, Taylor said his initial reservation about taking the job was because of the poor treatment of Yovanovitch.

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