Dutch Trump superfan who claimed he surveilled Ambassador Yovanovitch told people he was DEA

Source: NBC News

Text messages released by the House this month after its impeachment investigation showed that indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas had received cryptic texts about Yovanovitch's movements from Robert Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut, in March 2019, the same period in which Parnas and Giuliani were seeking the ambassador's ouster. Later document releases revealed that Hyde had been the middleman, passing the supposed surveillance details to Parnas from de Caluwe, a fellow Trump supporter he'd met De Caluwe, who's been iving in Belgium and Florida, has posted numerous photos and pro-Trump slogans on his multiple social media accounts, projecting proximity to Trump's orbit with a constant stream of posts that depict Republican events, Trump's Washington hotel and even a Christmas reception at the White House. Sometimes he is clearly at the event pictured, but sometimes he isn't, and he isn't in any pictures that show Trump himself. He has said he's a financial adviser who's never surveilled any Americans, and he has dismissed his encrypted texts claiming to have Yovanovitch under surveillance in March as just "ridiculous banter" with a friend. Trump fired Yovanovitch two months later.

Four people who know de Caluwe said he presented himself when they met as working for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He occasionally told others he was FBI or CIA.
Leland McKee, a Trump supporter and frequent guest at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, met de Caluwe in Orlando, Florida, in 2018 at the request of a mutual acquaintance. He said de Caluwe wanted him to invest in a "tracking thing" he was developing
As early as last March, de Caluwe was telling people about a company he was starting that could track people or objects through technology, according to four people who know de Caluwe. That's the same time frame in which Parnas and Giuliani were trying to oust Yovanovitch and de Caluwe was sending messages about her whereabouts to Hyde.

He told several of them that it involved RFID, which uses radio frequencies emitted by small transponders that can be attached to objects to identify and track them from a distance. He also mentioned RFID technology in an online profile that identified one of his projects as "TRACK & TRACE NEW IT TECH COMPANY."

But several people with knowledge of de Caluwe's romantic life said he has been involved for several years with a Ukrainian woman living in Belgium. Photographs obtained by NBC News show de Caluwe and the Ukrainian woman together last March — the same month he sent the texts about Yovanovitch's supposed whereabouts to Hyde.
Several individuals who know de Caluwe from his time spent in Florida said he worked to ingratiate himself with wealthy Trump supporters and then sought to leverage those relationships to solicit investments in his business ventures.
Much of de Caluwe's social media presence, including photos of him at Trump events, has been scrubbed from the internet since his name emerged as part of the Yovanovitch story. NBC News preserved screenshots of his online profiles before the content was deleted or made private.







Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/dutch-trump-superfan-who-claimed-he-surveilled-ambassador-yovanovitch-told-n1124881