Trump attacks US envoy Marie Yovanovitch as she testifies at impeachment hearings

An emotional Marie Yovanovitch reveals she felt threatened by the President as he unleashes on Twitter while she gives evidence.

The former ambassador to Ukraine testified that she felt threatened by President Trump’s disparaging comments about her in a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart and was alarmed by the State Department’s failure to defend her from attacks by the president’s personal attorney and others, in the second public hearing of the impeachment inquiry.

Marie Yovanovitch said she felt terrible when she received a 1am phone call in late April recalling her to Washington, where she was told the president wanted her removed from her post but not given a reason why. “It’s not the way I wanted my career to end,” she said.

Friday’s hearing featured more starkly personal testimony than Wednesday’s first public session. Ms. Yovanovitch, whom her colleagues describe as private and introverted, was visibly emotional as she described the circumstances of her firing and looked stricken when House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) told her the president had attacked her on Twitter during her testimony.

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

Ms. Yovanovitch told investigators that her concerns deepened when the White House in September released a rough transcript of Mr. Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Mr. Trump described the ambassador as “bad news” and said she would “go through some things.” “It was a terrible moment. A person who saw me actually reading the transcript said that the colour drained from my face, I think I even had a physical reaction,” she said. She described herself as “shocked, appalled, devastated that the president of the United States would talk about any ambassador like that to a foreign head of state,” then added: “And it was me. I mean, I couldn’t believe it.” Of the president’s comment about what she would “go through,” she said: “It didn’t sound good. It sounded like a threat.” Democrats portrayed Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster as clearing the way for Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, and other Trump allies to push Ukraine to undertake investigations that could help Mr. Trump politically.

“Getting rid of Ambassador Yovanovitch helped set the stage for an irregular channel that could pursue the two investigations that mattered so much to the president, the 2016 conspiracy theory, and most important, an investigation into the 2020 political opponent he apparently feared most, Joe Biden,” said Mr. Schiff in his opening remarks.

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Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the committee, opened by criticising the impeachment inquiry as a waste of time. “It’s unfortunate that today and for most of next week we will continue engaging in the Democrats’ daylong TV spectacles instead of solving the problems we were all sent to Washington to address,” he said. Republicans repeated their criticisms from Wednesday of how Mr. Schiff was conducting the hearings, including allowing witnesses to testify about second- or third-hand information and interrupting GOP questions.

The hearing recessed late Friday morning for House votes; Republican questioning is set to begin once the hearing reconvenes.

Ms Yovanovitchsaid she felt intimidated by the President.

Ms. Yovanovitch’s testimony refocused attention on both Mr. Giuliani, who led the campaign against her, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose department didn’t publicly defend her from those attacks and ousted her at the president’s request. Presidents have the authority to nominate and replace ambassadors as they wish.

Mr. Trump ordered Ms. Yovanovitch’s removal this spring after months of complaints from Mr. Giuliani and others that she was undermining him abroad and obstructing efforts to persuade Kiev to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, The Wall Street Journal has reported. She testified that a top State Department official told her that Mr. Pompeo could no longer shield her from those claims, which she has refuted.

“I remain disappointed that the department’s leadership and others have declined to acknowledge that the attacks against me and others are dangerously wrong,” Ms. Yovanovitch said in her opening remarks, in which she point-by-point disputed claims surfaced by Mr. Giuliani and others about her. “As Foreign Service professionals are being denigrated and undermined, the institution is also being degraded. This will soon cause real harm, if it hasn’t already.” The president sought the ambassador’s removal on multiple occasions. This spring, he directed Madeleine Westerhout, his personal assistant at the time, to call administration officials including Mr. Pompeo and tell them to fire Ms. Yovanovitch, according to people familiar with the matter.

Almost a year earlier, at an April 2018 dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington with top donors to the super PAC America First Action, an associate of Mr. Giuliani, Lev Parnas, brought up the ambassador and told the president she was bad-mouthing him in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump replied that she should be fired, the people said. Ms. Yovanovitch has denied speaking ill of the president.

Mr. Giuliani told the Journal that when he mentioned the ambassador to the president this spring, Mr. Trump “remembered he had a problem with her earlier and thought she had been dismissed.” Mr. Trump on Friday defended his decision to oust Ms. Yovanovitch, tweeting that it was his “absolute right” to choose his ambassadors. He also attacked her, saying: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.” Mr. Schiff suggested that the tweet amounted to witness intimidation.

“I don’t think I have such powers,” Ms. Yovanovitch said, asked to respond to the tweet during the hearing. “I actually think that where I’ve served over the years I and others have demonstrably made things better.” In the first hours of the hearing, Ms. Yovanovitch repeatedly stressed her concerns about Mr. Pompeo’s leadership of the State Department, where she said the “policy process was visibly unraveling, leadership vacancies go unfilled, and senior and midlevel officers ponder an uncertain future and head for the doors.” She added: “The State Department is being hollowed out from within at a competitive and complex time on the world stage. This is not a time to undercut our diplomats.” The State Department didn’t respond to requests for comment. Daniel Goldman, the Democratic counsel who questioned Ms. Yovanovitch, focused on the president’s effect on the department. “You were one of the most senior diplomats in the State Department. … You had been appointed as an ambassador three times by both Republican and Democratic presidents. And the State Department would not issue a statement in support of you against false allegations because they were concerned about a tweet from the president of the United States?” “That’s my understanding,” she replied.

–Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.

The Wall Street Journal