TAMPER, TAMPER
SCHIFF RIPS DON FOR MEDDLING WITH IMPEACH WITNESS —
Marie Yovanovitch really got under President Trump’s skin.
The steely former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine spelled out in excruciating impeachment testimony Friday how Trump and his cronies subjected her to a “terrible” smear campaign that culminated in her abrupt removal from Kiev — and as she recounted the mudslinging, the president attacked her in rancorous tweets.
Testifying in the second televised hearing of the House impeachment inquiry, Yovanovitch said she was “shocked, appalled, devastated,” as well as outright scared for her safety after reading the White House transcript of the July 25 phone call in which
Trump, among other things, told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that she was “bad news” and that “things” were going to “happen to her.”
“It was a terrible moment,” Yovanovitch said. “A person who saw me actually reading the transcript said that the color drained from my face. I think I even had a physical reaction…Even now words kind of fail me.”
She added, “It didn’t sound good. It sounded like a threat.”
As she talking about the presidential smear, Trump unleashed a fresh wave of vitriol at her.
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump tweeted of the 33-year public service veteran and daughter of immigrants who fled Communism and Nazism in Europe.
“She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” the president continued. “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…It is called, quite simply, America First!”
Despite the tweet, it was Trump, not Zelensky, who badmouthed Yovanovitch on the call. During the call, Trump infamously also asked Zelensky to do him “a favor” by publicly announcing investigations of Joe Biden’s family and other Democrats before the 2020 election — requests that are at the heart of the impeachment probe.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, the leader of
the Democratic impeachment push, picked up on Trump’s derisive tweet in real-time and asked Yovanovitch to respond.
“Well, it’s very intimidating,” she said, shaking her head.
But, Yovanovitch stressed, she would not be silenced by the president’s bullying.
“I will continue my work,” she said.
In a clear sign that Democrats are considering a variety of articles of impeachment, Schiff said, “I want to let you know, ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
Asked later at the White House about his toxic tweets, Trump said, “I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among those blasting Trump’s tweet about Yovanovitch, and suggested it might be added to the impeachment probe.
“His choice to publicly broadcast his own, personally authored witness intimidation means he wants to sign up for another article on obstruction of justice, too,” Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman from the Bronx, said in her own Twitter post.
Even some Republicans were disturbed.
“I disagree with the tweet,” New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a GOP member of the intelligence panel, said during a brief break in the testimony.
Trump removed Yovanovitch from her post without explanation in May after she raised concerns about his dubious attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens and debunked rightwing claims about the 2016 election while using $391 million in U.S. military aid as part of an alleged quid pro quo.
She remains a State Department employee but no longer has any day-to-day responsibilities relating to Ukraine.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and political dirt-digger, spearheaded the Trumpian smear against Yovanovitch, relying on conspiracy theories floated by sketchy ex-Ukrainian officials who claimed she was corrupt and working to undermine the U.S. president and help Democrats.
Yovanovitch was also perceived as an opponent of lucrative business schemes pursued by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Giuliani’s Biden dirt partners who have since been indicted in a sweeping campaign finance scheme that overwere laps with the Ukraine scandal.
Yovanovitch said many of the ex-officials Giuliani listened to corrupt themselves, including Yuriy Lutsenko, the country’s former top prosecutor, adding they wanted her out because she was leading efforts to stamp out corruption in the country. Lutsenko has since come under investigation by his own government.
Yovanovitch took her own jabs at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other State Department brass throughout her testimony, knocking them for refusing to defend her and other career diplomats against Trump’s baseless smears.
“Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want,” Yovanovitch said.
Breaking with the president, Republicans in the room repeatedly made a point of praising Yovanovitch for her service before questioning her.
But Trump-loyal Republicans spent most of the hearing spinning the same baseless claims about the Bidens that sparked the impeachment probe.
California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the intelligence committee, echoed Trump in dubbing the impeachment inquiry a “hoax.”
“These hearings should not be occurring at all,” Nunes said.
After nearly seven hours of testimony, Yovanovitch left the hearing room to a standing ovation from Democratic lawmakers and audience members. She could be seen smiling as she walked out flanked by her attorneys.