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Yovanovitch: 'Smear Campaign' Undermined U.S. National Security
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November 15, 2019
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0:37Now PlayingFormer U.S. Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch provided chilling detail in Trump impeachment hearings Friday of the threat she felt upon suddenly being ousted from her post and learning President Donald Trump had denounced her in his July phone call with Ukraine’s president. In that call, Trump assailed her as “bad news” and said she was “going to go through some things.”
In an extraordinary moment, even in an administration filled with them, Trump himself went after her again as she spoke, tweeting from the White House that everywhere she served had “turned bad.” He emphasized that as president he had the “absolute right” to appoint his own ambassadors.
Rather than distract from the career diplomat’s somber but powerful testimony, Trump’s interference could provide more evidence against him in the probe.
“It’s very intimidating,” Yovanovitch said when Trump’s new tweet was shown on a screen in the hearing room. “I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidated.”
Democrats strongly agreed.
“I want you to know that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, Intelligence Committee chairman who displayed Trump’s attack.
During the second day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry, Yovanovitch described a “smear campaign” against her by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and others, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., before her firing.
She told the lawmakers her sudden removal had played into the hands of “shady interests the world over” with dangerous intentions toward the United States.
She recalled that as she had read the White House’s rough transcript of Trump’s conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, another person said, “The color drained from my face.”
She said quietly, “Even now words fail me.”
Her removal is one of several events at the center of the impeachment effort.
“These events should concern everyone in this room,” the diplomat testified in opening remarks. “Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want.”
The daughter of immigrants who fled the former Soviet Union and Nazi German, she described a 33-year career, including three tours as an ambassador to some of the world’s tougher postings, before arriving in Ukraine in 2016. She was forced out in May 2019.
She denied the accusations against her, including that she favored Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election and that she circulated a “Do Not Prosecute” list to former top prosecutor in Ukraine, Sergiy Lutsenko, which she called a “fabrication.”
Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the panel, opened the day’s hearing saying she was “too tough on corruption for some, and her principled stance made her enemies.”
It became clear, he said, “President Trump wanted her gone.”
The top Republican on the panel, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, bemoaned the hearings as a “daylong TV spectacle.”
Nunes complained that Democrats are relying on hearsay testimony from witnesses who only know of Trump’s actions second-hand. He also pressed to hear from the still anonymous government whistleblower who first alerted officials about President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukraine that is in question. “These hearings should not be occurring at all,” he said.
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