A female political consultant was granted a protection order against Robert F. Hyde last year after alleging that he “demonstrated an inveterate pattern of monitoring, tracking, and surveilling” her location, according to court documents obtained by the Courant.
Hyde is tied to a growing controversy over alleged surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch, who was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine until President Donald Trump removed her from her post last year and has become a central figure in the impeachment inquiry into Trump. She testified before Congress that she felt threatened before she departed last May.
From December 2018 through last May, Hyde aggressively harassed the political consultant, including stalking her at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., sending disturbing messages to her clients and attempting to blackmail her, according to documents filed in Superior Court in the District of Columbia.
Hyde “kept close tabs” on the woman’s “personal and professional whereabouts,” and would “surprise her with unsettling visits” at businesses functions, according to court documents. Hyde also posted on his social media accounts that “she and others were conspiring against him.”
The Courant is not naming the woman because she fears for her safety.
In late May, after being granted a temporary protection order against Hyde by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, the woman was granted a civil protection order. The order expires on July 30.
In response to the protection order, Simsbury police removed six firearms and more than 800 rounds of ammunition from Hyde’s home last June, according to a police report.
Hyde is accused of violating the judge’s order that he stay away from the woman. Police in Melrose, Mass., charged him in November with violation of a restraining order. He was in court on Thursday and had his case continued to March 6. He remains free on a personal recognizance bond.
A long-shot Republican candidate for Connecticut’s 5th congressional district, Hyde is a 40-year-old veteran of the Marine Corps who served from 1999 to 2005, attaining the rank of corporal. In documents released by House Democrats on Tuesday, he was linked to an apparent surveillance operation of Yovanovitch by associates of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Rep. Eliot L. Engel, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, called for an investigation into what he said in a statement Wednesday were “profoundly alarming” messages between Hyde and Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani.
The messages, which were sent last March, suggested Hyde was keeping tabs on Yovanovitch’s whereabouts and reporting that information back to Parnas.
“She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off,” Hyde apparently wrote Parnas on March 25, followed within seconds by “She’s next to the embassy” and “Not in the embassy.”
Hyde downplayed the texts in a television interview Wednesday and said he was “absolutely not” tracking Yovanovitch. Parnas said in a subsequent interview that he did not take Hyde seriously.
The Courant has reached out to a lawyer for Hyde for additional comment.
The political consultant met Hyde in May 2018. That October, she founded a political consulting firm for which Hyde worked as an independent contractor. But the woman fired him after a few weeks due to his “subpar performance” and complaints from two of her female employees of Hyde’s “inappropriate behavior and advances,” according to court documents.
In the ensuing months, Hyde sent “various forms of social media, text messages, and e-mails” to the woman, “with the intent of instilling fear,” according to court documents. As a result, the woman “became a dysfunctional disaster” and suffered “extreme and prolonged fear, harm, and continued emotional distress,” court documents say.
In one incident on Dec.. 5, 2018, at the Trump Hotel in Washington, Hyde “shoved my colleague out of the way to try to grab and hug me in public,” the woman wrote in her petition for a civil protection order, filed last May. Later that day, Hyde waited for her to attend and leave an event and stalked her at the hotel, she wrote. She asked a colleague to walk her to the elevator as a safety measure, according to the documents.
By the end of December, Hyde’s “humiliation and harassment” had grown so alarming that the woman decided not to attend the White House Christmas party. In January, the woman’s firm paid for extra security for their launch party at the Trump Hotel in Washington and requested that the hotel staff inform them if Hyde was planning to stay there at the same time.
Between late January and early April, Hyde’s contact with the woman appeared to cease. It was during this period that Hyde appeared to communicate with Parnas regarding the alleged surveillance of Yovanovitich, through WhatsApp messages dated late March.
On April 1, Hyde reappeared, waiting for the woman to finish a dinner at the Trump Hotel, according to court documents.
On May 16, 2019, the woman canceled a previously planned trip to the Trump National Doral Miami because Hyde “was staying at the hotel and we felt threatened and unsafe,” according to court documents. That same day, Doral police were dispatched to a man at the hotel “in distress fearing for his life,” according to an incident report. The man, identified as Hyde, told the responding officer that “a hit man was out to get him” and that his computer was being hacked by the Secret Service.
The police removed Hyde from the hotel and took him to an undisclosed location. The incident was classified by the police as a “Baker/Marchman Act,” in reference to a Florida law that allows law enforcement to involuntarily hold a person for assessment due to mental illness or substance abuse concerns. Police said that Hyde was involuntarily committed to a mental health facility.
In a now-deleted video on social media, Hyde said that he was in a “facility” for nine days because “they Baker Acted me.”
“I passed all medicals, physicals, psych exams and diagnosis with flying colors. … So, in all honesty, eff you and your intelligence agencies, whatever or whoever was or is effing with me,” he wrote in the post.
A few days after Doral police came in contact with Hyde, the Republican National Committee called the woman “to tell me they believe I am in danger,” according to court documents.
In her request for a protection order, the woman asked that Hyde stay away from her home, work and various locations including the Trump Hotel in Washington. She also requested that Hyde “stop social media rants and threats.”
Later that May, when Hyde discovered that the woman had filed a temporary protection order against him, he began sending messages about her to her business associates, according to court documents. One client told her that he had received a text message from Hyde that “disturbed” him and one of her colleagues warned her that he had received “absolutely bizarre emails” from Hyde. A colleague told the woman that Hyde seemed “fixated” on her.
According to court documents, Hyde’s behavior toward the woman “wreaked havoc” on her business and personal life, “causing her to lose clients and compromise her mental well-being, perceived safety, and the welfare of her business and family.”
Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com.
