As ex-envoy talks, Trump tweets barbs
Felt threatened, she recalls as president’s post is aired
WASHINGTON — The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine told the House impeachment inquiry Friday that she felt threatened by President Donald Trump and “shocked, appalled, devastated” that he vilified her in a call with another foreign leader.
Trump responded to Marie Yovanovitch in real time on Twitter, and his criticism that things “turned bad” everywhere she served was quickly displayed on a video screen in the hearing room, drawing a warning about witness intimidation from Democrats.
The back-and-forth unfolded on the second day of public impeachment hearings.
The day also included private testimony from David Holmes, a State Department aide, who said he had firsthand evidence that the U.S. ambassador to the European Union told Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would do “‘anything you ask him to,’” according to two people familiar with the testimony.
But in the televised hearings earlier Friday, Yovanovitch detailed a campaign by Trump’s allies to undermine her as she pushed to promote democracy and the
rule of law in Ukraine.
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump wrote on Twitter, at the very moment that Yovanovitch was testifying about having felt threatened by the president. “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.”
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, interrupted his counsel’s questioning to read the president’s words aloud to Yovanovitch and ask for her reaction.
“It’s very intimidating,” she replied.
To that, Schiff, D-Calif., replied, “Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
Democrats said the president’s comments were clear attempts to intimidate a crucial witness in the impeachment inquiry and do the same to others who might yet come forward, arguing that they could constitute grounds for an article of impeachment against Trump. Critics, however, said that by telling Yovanovitch on television what the president was tweeting, Democrats were the ones intimidating the witness.
Trump said later when asked about his tweets, “I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech.”
He lashed out at Democrats for conducting what he called an unfair impeachment process, saying “it’s considered a joke all over Washington and all over the world.” Trump later said he had only watched “a little bit” of the hearing.
But even some conservatives criticized Trump’s tweet as misguided. Former independent counsel Ken Starr, a frequent Trump defender, said on Fox News that the president “was not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet. Extraordinarily poor judgment.”
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., added, “I don’t think the president should have done that.”
‘TERRIBLE THING TO HEAR’
Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who served for decades under both Republican and Democratic presidents and was first appointed by President Ronald Reagan, was pushed from her post in Kyiv in May, two months earlier than planned, after criticism from Trump allies.
She told lawmakers that she learned she was being pulled back from the deputy secretary of state, John Sullivan, who relayed “words that every foreign service officer understands: ‘The president has lost confidence in you.’ That was a terrible thing to hear.”
Because she was gone from Ukraine before July 25, her testimony did not go precisely to the heart of the allegation being investigated: That on that date, Trump asked Zelenskiy to “do us a favor” and announce an investigation to help discredit his political rivals, chiefly former Vice President Joe Biden.
However, Trump mentioned Yovanovitch during that call, shortly after he praised a Ukrainian prosecutor who had been at odds with Yovanovitch over her efforts to root out corruption and shortly before he asked Zelenskiy about Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump called her “bad news” and said she was going to “go through some things,” a comment that Yovanovitch told the committee had taken her breath away when she read a memorandum of the call.
She testified that the color drained from her face and she was, “shocked, appalled, devastated that the president of the United States would talk about any ambassador like that to a foreign head of state — and it was me. I mean, I couldn’t believe it.”
“It sounded like a threat,” Yovanovitch added.
Still, Republicans argued that Yovanovitch is irrelevant to the inquiry because she left before the July 25 call and because ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, who may recall them for any reason.
“I’m not exactly sure what the ambassador is doing here today,” panel ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said, suggesting Yovanovitch’s predicament was little more than a personnel dispute that would be “more appropriate for the subcommittee on Human Resources on Foreign Affairs.”
Nunes and the Republicans’ counsel, Steve Castor, asked Yovanovitch a series of questions to establish her irrelevance, asking if she was involved in preparing for the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy, or if she had taken part in plans for a White House meeting between the two heads of state, or if she had ever spoken with Trump or his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, among other queries. Yovanovitch answered no to all of them.
“The ambassador’s not a material fact witness to any of the accusations that are being hurled at the president in this impeachment inquiry,” Nunes said.
Republicans gave the lone Republican woman on the committee — Elise Stefanik of New York — a prominent role in questioning Yovanovitch. The session was tense at times, as Republicans made parliamentary points that Schiff, banging his gavel, repeatedly ruled out of order.
When Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ga., noted that the president had the absolute right to fire her, Yovanovitch agreed, adding, “I do wonder why it was necessary to smear my reputation.” Wenstrup cut her off, saying, “Well I wasn’t asking you about that, so thank you very much, ma’am.”
LUNCH IN KYIV
Trump specifically inquired about a political investigation by Ukraine into the Bidens during a separate July phone call with a top U.S. diplomat, Holmes said later Friday in closed testimony.
Holmes, an embassy staff member in Kyiv, testified that he overheard a July 26 phone call between Trump and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, in which the president asked if Zelenskiy would “do the investigation,” according to two people familiar with the testimony. The conversation with Sondland came the day after Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy.
“Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘He’s going to do it,’ adding that President Zelenskiy will do ‘anything you ask him to,’” Holmes said, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the closed proceedings.
Holmes’ testimony confirms an account relayed Wednesday by William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said Holmes told lawmakers that he overhead the call while he was having lunch in Kyiv in July with Sondland. Trump was talking so loudly that Sondland had to hold the phone from his ear, which allowed others in the restaurant to overhear the call that’s now part of the impeachment inquiry, according to another person familiar with Holmes’ testimony but was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Lieu said two other people heard the call as well, and said there were four people at the lunch. The Associated Press has already identified one of the other people who heard the call as Suriya Jayanti, a foreign service officer based in Kyiv.
“He has firsthand knowledge of the conversation between Ambassador Sondland and the president of the United States,” Lieu said of Holmes. “He overheard the conversation.”
Lieu said Holmes detailed specific quotes from the president in the deposition.
Holmes, now the political counselor at the embassy in Kyiv, joined the foreign service corps in 2002 under President George W. Bush and has served in Afghanistan, Colombia, India, Kosovo and Russia and was on the National Security Council staff as well.
Holmes made his concerns about the call known through the State Department’s socalled Dissent Channel, which provides diplomats with a confidential way to register serious concerns. It’s similar to but distinct from the method — a personal cable to the secretary of state — that Taylor used to register his objections about Ukraine policy. Information for this article was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times; by John Wagner, Rosalind S. Helderman, Rachael Bade, Toluse Olorunnipa, Karoun Demirjian, Colby Itkowitz and Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post; and by Matthew Lee, Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Eric Tucker, Laurie Kellman, Jonathan Lemire, Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram, Matthew Daly and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press.
Still, Republicans argued that Yovanovitch is irrelevant to the inquiry because she left before the July 25 call and because ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, who may recall them for any reason.