FBI visits Robert Hyde’s home and office after he’s swept into Ukraine scheme

The FBI paid a visit to Republican congressional candidate Robert Hyde’s Connecticut home and business on Thursday, a senior law enforcement official said.

The agent’s visit comes days after the House Intelligence Committee released texts Hyde sent an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani suggesting he was surveilling then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

A spokesperson for the FBI field office in New Haven, Connecticut declined to comment. Hyde did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

One of Hyde’s neighbors told NBC News that an FBI agent arrived at Hyde’s home before dawn and parked out front in a gray SUV. The neighbor said they believed the FBI agent did not enter Hyde’s home and left by 10:30 a.m. Hyde has a “No Trespassing” sign on his property and a sign indicating security cameras are in operation, the neighbor said.

Hyde told NBC News earlier this week that he was drunk and unserious when he sent the texts to Giuliani’s now-indicted associate Lev Parnas. In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday, Parnas called Hyde a “weird” character he met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and doubted that Hyde was actually surveilling Yovanovitch.

“Well, I don’t believe it’s true,” he said of Hyde’s claims of tracking Yovanovitch. “I think he was either drunk or he was trying to make himself bigger than he was, so I didn’t take it seriously.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com