When it was revealed that Donald Trump had characterized Masha Yovanovitch as “bad news” and, in what felt like a thinly veiled threat, that the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was “going to go through some things,” members of the typically staid diplomatic corps reacted with shock and disbelief. And yet, like so much of what Trump says, his remark lacked clarity. What “things” exactly? In a twist on the eve of the impeachment trial in the Senate, documents released by the House on Tuesday suggest the depths of the threat Yovanovitch, who was abruptly recalled from her post in May at the behest of the White House, faced. But the newly released documents also amplify the deafening silence of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“We now know that Pompeo doesn’t stick up for his people. Mr. Benghazi is silent about an actual threat on an actual American ambassador. We don’t know what he knew and when he knew it,” a former ambassador told me Wednesday morning, referring to the 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya, a favored issue of Pompeo when he served as a Kansas congressman. “There is an organized crime syndicate in the White House and the only question is how far it extends. Pompeo is silent and looking the other way.”

The cache of documents—which include information provided to House investigators by Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani—provides a fresh layer of intrigue to the ongoing impeachment inquiry. Perhaps most germane to the impeachment inquiry is a previously undisclosed letter from Giuliani to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the former New York City mayor wrote that he was acting with the Trump’s “knowledge and consent” in his role as the president’s “personal” attorney in his effort to pressure Zelensky to investigate an unfounded 2016 election conspiracy theory and Joe Biden. One handwritten note by Parnas that reads, “Get Zalensky [sic] to announce that the Biden case will be investigated,” could be potentially damaging to Trump in the Senate impeachment trial.

But it is the disclosures regarding the plot to oust Yovanovitch from her post that have sent shockwaves through the diplomatic community. Specifically, messages between Parnas and Robert Hyde, a Trump donor and Republican congressional candidate, that suggest Yovanovitch was being tracked. “They know she’s a political puppet,” Hyde wrote to Parnas in one exchange. “They will let me know when she’s on the move….They are willing to help if you/we would like a price.” And in another message, Hyde wrote to Parnas, “They are moving her tomorrow. The guys over they (sic) asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them. Wake up Yankees man. She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off. She’s next to the embassy. Not in the embassy. Private security. Been there since Thursday.”

Diplomats I’ve spoken with have expressed shock at the notion that Yovanovitch—who was, in many ways, a victim of her own competence—was under surveillance by Giuliani associates. “We expect threats from ISIS, we expect threats from Hezbollah. We do not expect threats from a guy running for Congress in Connecticut who is a friend of the president,” the former ambassador said. “It was very menacing. I don’t think there is any other way to read those texts.” A former high-ranking State Department official echoed the sentiment. “That a group of people with their own agenda would put private surveillance on the U.S. ambassador and would work to have her removed—for no other reason than carrying out the U.S. policies to help combat the rampant corruption in Ukraine—is really horrifying,” this person told me. “The purported involvement of the president’s personal lawyer makes this all worse as well. In more ‘normal’ times, he would be fired by the president for this sort of behavior. I’m truly horrified by all of this. It shows a rogue foreign policy, that threatened harm on U.S. policies and the U.S. ambassador, being run for political reasons.”