In another exchange, Hyde—who insisted Tuesday night that he was totally just joking in these messages—wrote to Parnas, “Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch…. I’ll get right on that.”

Hyde described having contact with a “private security” team located near the embassy that was apparently monitoring the ambassador’s movements. “She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off,” he wrote in one message. “They will let me know when she’s on the move,” he said in another. Later, he alerted Parnas that he had been told Yovanovitch would not be moved to a “special security unit.”

Needless to say, the notion that a group of hired thugs was surveilling a United States citizen and planning God knows what has shocked members of the foreign service. “It’s horrifying, it’s just unbelievable,” retired ambassador Jim Melville told CNN. “The very idea that there were elements, possibly of the U.S. government or connected to the U.S. government, who were trying to do an end run around everything that we’ve established to keep our mission safe is just outrageous.” Retired ambassador Nancy McEldowney had a similar take, saying, “I find this really shocking and alarming and the idea that American citizens would be surveilling an American ambassador with the endorsement of the President’s personal attorney, it’s just so troubling to me.” (Melville also went off on Secretary Pompeo, saying, “He hasn’t stood up for anybody in the foreign service. All he’s looking out for is his own back and the president. He has no interest in the good of the service and its people and he’s made that abundantly clear repeatedly.”) A third retired ambassador said that they had “never heard of anything like [the surveillance],” adding: “It’s common that terrorists and former communists do this to us. It’s appalling and incomprehensible that somebody who is working for the President’s personal lawyer would have been doing this to our ambassador.”

The State Department did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Giuliani claimed on Tuesday that he had no knowledge of any potential surveillance of Yovanovitch, while a lawyer for Parnas, Joseph A. Bondy, said the messages showed his client did not take part in the scheme. “There is no evidence that Mr. Parnas participated, agreed, paid money or took any other steps in furtherance of Mr. Hyde’s proposals,” Bondy said.

Yovanovitch, who was threatened by Trump both in his infamous July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine and via tweet during her testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, has called for an investigation, with her lawyer saying in a statement, “The notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing. We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.”