On Friday morning, Masha Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, is scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill for the second day of public impeachment hearings. In closed-door testimony last month, Yovanovitch recalled that she was abruptly told to get “on the next plane” from Kiev to Washington, D.C., in May following a “concerted campaign” of “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives” that began in summer 2018 and led Donald Trump to lose confidence in her ability to serve, and ultimately to her sudden recall. But Yovanovitch—while perhaps the most prominent—is hardly the first seasoned bureaucrat to fall victim to a concerted effort by the conservative media and Trumpworld to dismantle the so-called “deep state” to weed out Obama holdovers in the U.S. government.

A new inspector general report released on Thursday reveals that a purge of individuals Trump allies viewed as insufficiently loyal to the president began in the earliest days of the Trump administration. And arguably, it was a failure to crack down on this targeting that fostered an environment in which the dismissal of an experienced career diplomat like Yovanovitch failed to garner any real attention, let alone alarm, until a whistle-blower complaint launched the impeachment inquiry.

“[The Trump administration] came into office—at least as far as State is concerned—convinced that the career service was biased against the Trump Administration,” a former high-ranking State Department official told me. “This team, in my view, has simply never understood that the career service works for whoever is the president. And they have acted badly. And probably will continue to do so.”

That the long-awaited I.G. report was released amid the impeachment spectacle, as if to overshadow it, came as little surprise to diplomats I spoke with. The timing is seen as par for the course for this administration. As the Washington media drinks from a fire hose of news breaks, burying bad headlines is a light lift. And for the State Department, the I.G. report is certainly damaging, even if—as sources I spoke with contend—it is still incomplete and disappointing in its conclusions. “The willful failure of the I.G. to connect the obvious dots undermines the very process he is statutorily charged with shepherding,” said Ian Moss, one of the individuals whose allegations were investigated. “That it took almost two years to produce this report and then the transparent decision to delay its release until the middle of an epic news cycle is telling.”

For the report, the inspector general reviewed “allegations of politicized and other improper personnel practices” by State Department officials affecting five individuals during Rex Tillerson’s tenure. The conclusions are mixed, though the inspector general, Steve Linick, does note that this was, in part, because he was “unable to obtain essential information from key decision makers.” But the report does paint a picture of how conservative media targeted career State Department officials and, by design, influenced personnel decisions within the bureau. For instance, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a U.S.-born civil servant of Iranian descent, was the subject of an article by Conservative Review titled, “Iran Deal Architect Is Running Tehran Policy at the State Dept.” The outlet referred to Nowrouzzadeh as a “trusted Obama aide” who “burrowed” her way into the bureau. The article was circulated between White House staffers and top political appointees—including Margaret Peterlin, chief of staff to Secretary Tillerson, Christine Ciccone, Peterlin’s deputy, Brian Hook, the director of Policy Planning, Edward Lacey, Hook’s deputy, Matthew Mowers, a senior adviser to Tillerson, and Julia Haller, the acting White House liaison—and set off a wave of unfounded allegations and a discussion of her ouster.