WASHINGTON — As former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testified Friday that the smear campaign against her showed “shady interests” around the world how easy it is to remove a U.S. diplomat they don’t like, President Donald Trump shot back via Twitter:
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” the president wrote. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him.”
Soon after, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff interrupted questioning of the ambassador to read the tweet to the packed hearing room and millions of Americans looking on.
“Ambassador Yovanovitch, as we sit here testifying, the president is attacking you on Twitter,” said Schiff, D-Calif. “What effect do you think that has on other witnesses’ willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing?”
“Well, it’s very intimidating,” she said.
“Well, I want to let you know, ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously,” Schiff responded.
The exchange was a remarkable moment during historical hearings where Congress is considering whether to impeach a sitting president. Democrats later said the tweet could contribute to charges besides allegations of bribery, as they called Trump’s comment part of a larger pattern of intimidation and obstruction of justice.
Speaking to reporters several hours later, Trump said the hearings are political and not a legal process and he defended his tweet as an exercise of his right to “free speech.”
Asked if his tweet could be seen as intimidating, the president said: “I don’t think so at all.”
If the House votes to impeach the president, the Senate will hold a trial to decide whether to remove him from office. No president has ever been removed from office. President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 while facing impeachment in the House.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is co-chairman of Trump’s Utah campaign, said the GOP controlled Senate will not convict the president and he dismissed the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as “absurd.”
The president “hasn’t done anything impeachable. He hasn’t done anything criminal. He’s not done anything even wrong. If you look at what happened, he’s succeeded where the Obama administration had tried and failed for years, to convince Ukraine to investigate corruption,” Lee said. “That’s not impeachable. That’s something to be commended.”
The president was the only Republican to publicly criticize Yovanovitch Friday. Her compelling personal story of her parents escaping Stalin’s Soviet Union and Nazi Germany before making their way to the United States earned praise and gratitude from nearly all committee members, as did her demanding and dedicated 33-year career in the foreign service.
After the five-hour hearing, the public in attendance stood and applauded as she left the large, elegant hearing room in the Longworth House Office Building.
After Friday’s public hearing ended, the committee walked to their secured room in the basement of the Capitol building for a closed-door session to hear from David Holmes, a political adviser in Kyiv, who overheard Trump asking about the investigations in Ukraine. Holmes was at dinner with Gordon Sondland when the Ambassador to the European Union called up Trump on his cell phone.
Republicans on the committee stressed that Yovanovitch had been recalled from Ukraine two months before Trump’s call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. But a transcript of the call shows she was a subject of the conversation.
The president described her as “bad news, and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news.” Trump later added. “Well, she’s going to go through some things.”
Yovanovitch said she was “shocked and devastated that I would feature in a phone call between two heads of state in such a manner. ... It was a terrible moment.”
Her three-year tour in Ukraine was ending in June, but she agreed to extend it until the end of the year at the request of the State Department. But she recounted being abruptly told in May to “get on the next plane” to America the same day she hosted an “International Woman of Courage” event honoring a Ukrainian anticorruption activist who died after having acid thrown at her.
Yovanovitch had a reputation for fighting corruption in Ukraine, and she wasn’t surprised that she upset those “who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me.”
“What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. ambassador,” she testified.
Under questioning, she confirmed many aspects of her closed-door testimony that described Ukrainian officials warning her late last year that two Soviet-born U.S. citizens, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were associates of Giuliani, were working with a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor to have Yovanovitch removed from her post. Both men were arrested last month on unrelated campaign finance violations. The campaign influenced Trump’s decision to recall her.
Yovanovitch, who served under six presidents, denied allegations that she was disloyal to Trump, including that she favored Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election. She also rejected the notion that Ukraine tried to interfere in the election, noting that U.S. intelligence findings concluded that it was Russia.
She agreed in her testimony and under questioning that presidents can appoint and recall ambassadors at any time. But she asked why it was necessary for the president and others to malign her reputation.
“Our Ukraine policy has been into disarray, and shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American Ambassador who does not give them what they want,” she testified. “After these events what foreign official, corrupt or not, could be blamed for wondering whether the ambassador represents the president’s views? And what U.S. ambassador could be blamed for haboring the fear that they cannot count on our government to support them as they implement stated U.S. policy and defend U.S. interests.”
The impeachment inquiry centers on a July 25 phone call between Trump and newly elected Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, in which Trump asked for a “favor,” according to a rough transcript of the call provided by the White House. Trump wanted an investigation of Democrats in the 2016 election and into potential political rival Joe Biden, whose son had held a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Later it was revealed that the administration was withholding military aid from Ukraine at the time of the call.
Contributing: Lisa Riley Roche