Former US ambassador to Ukraine Maria Yovanovitch denied that she ever quashed a corruption probe, which was reportedly one of the reasons that President Trump and Rudy Giuliani wanted her gone, she said in her opening statements to lawmakers Friday, calling the allegation “fictitious.”

“I want to categorically state that I have never myself or through others, directly or indirectly, ever directed, suggested, or in any other way asked for any government or government official in Ukraine (or elsewhere) to refrain from investigating or prosecuting actual corruption,” she told House committees considering impeachment during a closed-door session on Capitol Hill.

“Equally fictitious is the notion that I am disloyal to President Trump. I have heard the allegation in the media that I supposedly told the Embassy team to ignore the president’s orders ‘since he was going to be impeached.’ That allegation is false. I have never said such a thing, to my Embassy colleagues or to anyone else,” she said in the statement, a copy of which was obtained by the New York Times.

Giuliani, with the help of a pair of Soviet born businessmen who were indicted this week on campaign fraud charges, wanted Yovanovitch removed from her post, with the former mayor telling Trump she was blocking a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, among other allegations, multiple media reports said.

The president removed her in May, and called her “bad news” in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he asked him to open an investigation into the Bidens, which sparked the impeachment proceedings.

“I have never met Hunter Biden, nor have I had any direct or indirect conversations with him. And although I have met former Vice President Biden several times over the course of our many years in government, neither he nor the previous administration ever, directly or indirectly, raised the issue of either Burisma or Hunter Biden with me,” she said.

Yovanovitch also asserted that she had only minimal contact with Giuliani, and that the Bidens were never discussed.

But she speculated that his cronies wanted her gone to make it easier to fatten their bank accounts with her anti-corruption efforts out of the way.

“With respect to Mayor Giuliani, I have had only minimal contacts with him — a total of three that I recall. None related to the events at issue. I do not know Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me. But individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine,” she said.

The former envoy also said she was shocked by the timing of her dismissal and the reasons for it.

“Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the president, I was nevertheless incredulous that the US government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives,” she said.

“To make matters worse, all of this occurred during an especially challenging time in bilateral relations with a newly elected Ukrainian president. This was precisely the time when continuity in the Embassy in Ukraine was most needed.”

She also threw cold water on a conspiracy theory that the Obama administration asked her to push the Ukrainians to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“The Obama administration did not ask me to help the Clinton campaign or harm the Trump campaign, nor would I have taken any such steps if they had,” she told lawmakers.

After her dismissal, a State Department official told her she had done nothing wrong, but that there had been a campaign to get Trump to remove her.

“You will understandably want to ask why my posting ended so suddenly. I wanted to learn that too, and I tried to find out. I met with the Deputy Secretary of State, who informed me of the curtailment of my term. He said that the President had lost confidence in me and no longer wished me to serve as his ambassador. He added that there had been a concerted campaign against me, and that the Department had been under pressure from the President to remove me since the Summer of 2018,” she said.

“He also said that I had done nothing wrong and that this was not like other situations where he had recalled ambassadors for cause. I departed Ukraine for good this past May,” she said.

And she worried that the State Department had become “hollowed out” during the Trump administration.

“Today, we see the State Department attacked and hollowed out from within. State Department leadership, with Congress, needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees. We need to rebuild diplomacy as the first resort to advance America’s interests and the front line of America’s defense. I fear that not doing so will harm our nation’s interest, perhaps irreparably,” she said.