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Ousted U.S. Envoy To Ukraine Calls Trump's Tweets During Her Testimony 'Intimidating'

By RFE/RL November 15, 2019

Ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch described denigrating tweets sent by President Donald Trump as she was testifying in an inquiry into his possible impeachment as "intimidating," while Democrats accused Trump of witness intimidation.

"I can't speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating," she said on November 15 when asked about her reaction to Trump's tweets, specifically one in which he wrote: "Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?"

Yovanovitch, a career U.S diplomat who was dismissed by Trump from her post in Ukraine in May, was the lone witness to testify in the second day of the House of Representatives' impeachment hearing.

The Democratic-led inquiry -- which could lead to impeachment proceedings and a trial in the Senate -- is probing whether Trump abused his office for personal and political gain by prodding a foreign government to investigate his foes and if those actions constitute impeachable offenses.

Yovanovitch opened her testimony by casting herself as a corruption fighter during her time in Kyiv, saying that "not all Ukrainians embraced our anti-corruption work" and "Ukrainians who played by the old, corrupt rules" sought to remove her.

Describing a "smear campaign" carried out in tandem with Trump allies, she said the foreigners found "Americans willing to partner with them, and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. ambassador."

Yovanovitch, 60, emerged as a key figure in the inquiry after she was mentioned as "the woman" in a White House memo of a July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

That call, in which Trump is alleged to have threatened to withhold nearly $400 in military aid unless Ukraine opened an investigation into a Democratic political rival and his son, is central to the impeachment inquiry.

"The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news," Trump was quoted as saying in the call, which took place weeks after she was recalled.

"She's going to go through some things," Trump added.

Yovanovitch said on November 15 that she was "shocked" that she would feature in a call with another foreign leader, adding that "even now words fail me."

Asked what she felt Trump meant by the words "she's going to go through [some things]," Yovanovitch said that "it sounded like a threat."

Yovanovitch said in a private deposition on October 11 that she was told that people were "looking to hurt" her, and was told by one senior Ukrainian official that she needed to "watch my back." She also answered in the affirmative when asked if she felt threatened.

Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said in his opening remarks that Yovanovitch "was tough on corruption. Too tough on corruption for some."

After asking Yovanovitch what her reaction was to Trump's tweets during the hearing, Schiff responded that, "I want to let you know, ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously."

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham later dismissed the allegation, saying in a statement that "the tweet was not witness intimidation, it was simply the president's opinion, which he is entitled to."

The ranking Republican on the committee, Devin Nunes, said in his opening remarks that the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy was being used by Democrats "as an excuse to fulfill their Watergate fantasies."

Nunez also described Yovanovitch as "not a material" witness in the inquiry because she was not involved in the preparations for the July 25 call or in the deliberations over the pause in military aid.

The second day of hearings was held as the Democrats moved away from using the Latin phrase "quid pro quo" to describe Trump's alleged threat to withhold the aid to Ukraine unless it opened an investigation into former Democratic Vice President and potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who worked in Ukraine.

"It's bribery," the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, told a news conference on November 14. "What the president has admitted to and says it's 'perfect,' I say it's perfectly wrong. It's bribery," Pelosi said.

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing related to the call, describing it as "perfect."

The U.S. Constitution includes "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" as impeachable offenses.

Critics say the president left Ukraine at the mercy of Russia, which in 2014 seized and annexed Ukraine's Crimea region and started supporting separatists fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine in a war that has killed more than 13,000 people.

The White House and supporters of the president have denied that any actions were impeachable offenses, although some have said Trump's remarks to Zelenskiy were inappropriate.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/pelosi- trump-bribery-impeachment-hearing-yovanovicth -ukraine/30272841.html

Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.