Trump ‘sacked ambassador for being too tough on corruption’
A US ambassador known for being tough on corruption was removed from her post in Ukraine so Donald Trump could push his own interests, an impeachment hearing was told yesterday.
Marie Yovanovitch, a diplomat for more than 30 years, found herself the victim of a smear campaign by the US President and his allies before she was suddenly ousted earlier this year.
Following her removal, it is alleged that Mr Trump tried to lean on his Ukrainian counterpart to dig up dirt on his political rivals.
Critics have accused the President of acting like a mobster when, in the same phone call in which Mr Trump asked Volodymyr Zelensky for ‘a favour’, he also made what Miss Yovanovitch took as a threat to her.
Miss Yovanovitch told the congressional hearing yesterday that she was ‘shocked and devastated’, and the ‘colour drained out of my face’, when she read the transcript of the call where Mr Trump said she was ‘ bad’ and going to ‘go through some things’.
The dramatic testimony came during the second day of impeachment hearings beamed live on TV to millions of Americans. Adam Schiff, a senior Democrat, said Miss Yovanovitch was an ‘obstacle to the furtherance of the President’s personal and political agenda’.
He added: ‘In her time in Kiev, Ambassador Yovanovitch was tough on corruption, too tough on corruption for some, and her principled stance made her enemies. Some have argued, that a president has the ability to nominate or remove any ambassador he wants, that they serve at the pleasure of the president. And that is true. The question before us is not whether Donald Trump could recall an American ambassador with a stellar reputation for fighting corruption in Ukraine, but why would he want to?
‘Ambassador Yovanovitch was serving our nation’s interest in fighting corruption in Ukraine, but she was considered an obstacle to the furtherance of the President’s personal and political agenda. For that she was smeared and cast aside.’
Mr Trump had claimed he would not be watching proceedings on Capitol Hill but he attacked Miss Yovanovitch in real time on Twitter by saying that everywhere she served as a diplomat had ‘turned bad’.
Minutes later, the tweet was read out to the House intelligence committee, with Mr Schiff saying it was ‘ witness intimidation in real time by the President of the United States’.
Democrats claim that Mr Trump held up around £300million in military aid to Ukraine to try to force Mr Zelensky to open a probe into Joe Biden, the leading Democratic presidential candidate.
Mr Biden’s son had sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that had previously been under investigation. There is no suggestion that either Biden did anything wrong.
Miss Yovanovitch said she was ‘kneecapped’ from her job and ordered home on the next plane in a 1am phone call on May 24, just three days after Mr Zelensky’s inauguration.
The committee heard that for months she had been subjected to a ‘smear campaign’ because she had ‘ p***** off’ not only shady Ukranian officials with her anti- corruption drive but also Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Together they ‘ orchestrated the removal of a US ambassador’, said Miss Yovanovitch
Democrats are expected to vote on whether to lay impeachment charges against Mr Trump before Christmas.
‘Smeared and cast aside’