Former U.S. Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch provided chilling detail today in Trump impeachment hearings of being suddenly ousted from her post and feeling threatened upon learning President Trump had denounced her in a phone call to 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.”
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. 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. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
Asked at the hearing about the potential effect of such censure on U.S. officials and witnesses, she said, “Well, it’s very intimidating.”
Multiple Fox News personalities speculated that Trump’s insulting tweet today could result in witness tampering and witness intimidation charges.
Bret Baier tweeted, “That was a turning point in this hearing so far. She was already a sympathetic witness & the President’s tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation -adding an article of impeachment real-time.”
Chris Wallace echoed that sentiment on-air, “Most importantly, and I agree with Bret [Baier] here, I think that the really dramatic moment is that this wasn’t just testimony about the past, this played out in real-time with the president attacking her and saying that every place she served went back, and she was asked by Adam Schiff, do you see that as an effort to intimidate you and other witnesses, and she said ‘I feel that is quite intimidating.’ And that does raise the possibility of witness intimidation and witness tampering as a new charge here.”
Senior White House correspondent John Roberts, reporting from outside the White House, also said that “What we may have just seen, as has been mentioned unfold in real-time there, is the potential basis for articles of impeachment on witness intimidation. I’m not sure that the president’s tweet that he sent out while she was on the stand was particularly well advised.”
Yovanovitch was testifying on the second day of public impeachment hearings into Trump, just the fourth time in American history that the House of Representatives has launched such proceedings.
The investigation centers on whether Trump’s push for Ukrainian officials to investigate his political rivals amounted to an abuse of power, a charge he and Republicans vigorously deny.
After Trump’s tweet on Friday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee swiftly intervened, halting the questioning to read the president’s comments out loud to the witness — and Americans following the hearing — during a live broadcast across the country.
“Ambassador Yovanovitch, as we sit here testifying, the president is attacking you on Twitter,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California. He asked if it was designed to intimidate.
“I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidated,” she said.
Said Schiff, “Well, I want to let you know, Ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
Trump, asked about it later, said, “I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech.”
The president, however, like any other boss, does not have the right to intimidate a witness.
Rather than distract from the career diplomat’s testimony, Trump’s interference could provide more evidence against him in the probe.
Democrats said an allegation of witness intimidation could become an obstruction of justice charge in the impeachment probe.
In her testimony, 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. They have learned, she said, “how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want.”
She said quietly, “Even now words fail me.”
Her removal from her post is one of several events at the center of the impeachment effort.
In his July phone call with new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump asked for a “favor,” according to an account provided by the White House.
He wanted an investigation of Democrats and 2020 rival Joe Biden. Later it was revealed that the administration was withholding military aid from Ukraine at the time.
“These events should concern everyone in this room,” the diplomat testified in opening remarks.
Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said 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 daughter of immigrants who fled the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, 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 allegations against her, including that she favored Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election, and she rejected the notion that Ukraine tried to interfere in the election, as Trump claims, counter to mainstream U.S. intelligence findings that it was Russia.
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, and Republicans noted during questioning that Yovanovitch had left her position before the July phone call.
Nunes also pressed to hear from the still anonymous government whistleblower who first alerted officials about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine that is in question.
But one Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said Trump’s live tweeting at the ambassador was wrong.
She said, “I don’t think the president should have done that.”
Yovanovitch, a career diplomat, who has served both Republican and Democratic presidents, relayed her striking story of being told to “watch my back” and then being suddenly recalled by Trump in a swiftly developing series of events that sounded alarms about a White House shadow foreign policy.
In particular, Yovanovitch and others have described Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, as leading what one called an “irregular channel” outside the diplomatic mainstream of U.S.-Ukraine relations.
The White House has instructed officials not to comply with the probe, and most have been issued subpoenas to appear.
Later Friday, the panel in closed-door session was to hear from David Holmes, a political adviser in Kyiv, who overheard Trump asking about the investigations the day after the July conversation with Zelenskiy.
Holmes was at dinner with Gordon Sondland when the Ambassador to the European Union called up Trump. The conversation was apparently loud enough to be heard.
Trump says he knows nothing of such a call.
The Associated Press has reported a second U.S. Embassy official also overheard it.
Yovanovitch and other officials now testifying publicly are providing accounts that Democrats are relying on to make the case that the president’s behavior was impeachable.