Marie Yovanovitch, the third witness in public impeachment hearings, testified while president tweeted against her

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

An American ambassador recalled by Donald Trump from Ukraine has told impeachment investigators she felt “shocked and devastated” by Trump’s personal attacks on her, and that she was “amazed” corrupt elements in Ukraine had found willing American partners to take her down.

Democrats to consider Trump Twitter smear in articles of impeachment – live Read more

With Trump tweeting attacks on her even as she spoke, Marie Yovanovitch became the third witness in public impeachment hearings investigating whether Trump abused the powers of his office to serve his personal ends.

After a relatively hushed outing by two career foreign service officers on Wednesday, the chilly, ornate and cavernous hearing room vibrated on Friday with dramatic and personal testimony by Yovanovitch, a widely respected anti-corruption advocate who has served six US administrations including four Republican presidents.

A month and a half after the state department asked her to extend her three-year ambassadorship to Kiev for an additional year, Yovanovitch testified that she took a call from her superior at the state department that abruptly terminated her overseas careerin May.

“Ultimately, he said the words that every foreign service officer understands: ‘The president has lost confidence in you’,” Yovanovitch said, “That was a terrible thing to hear. After 33 years of service to our country, it was terrible.”

Play Video 0:46 Donald Trump denies tweets attacking Marie Yovanovitch were witness intimidation – video

She was the first woman to deliver public testimony critical of the president in the impeachment hearings. As she spoke, Trump unloaded on Twitter, writing “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad” and “It is the US president’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

One of the most impassioned responses of the day came from Congressman Jim Himes, who said: “I’m angry that a woman like you would not just be dismissed but humiliated and attacked by a president of the United States … in language that would embarrass a mob boss.”

In a highly unusual scene for the halls of Congress, as the hearing ended, the public gallery, which had been mostly quiet all day, suddenly erupted in enthusiastic cheers and a standing ovation that lasted several seconds as she walked from the room.

Just as the hearing began, Trump released a short transcript, in a seeming distraction stunt, of a congratulatory phone call from April that he had with the Ukrainian president.

But the House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff methodically returned the spotlight – and the microphone – to Yovanovitch, who described a smear campaign against her that began in Ukraine and was aggressively taken up by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal emissary; by Donald Trump Jr; and ultimately by the president himself.

She explained how her removal as ambassador was the top priority of a former Ukrainian prosecutor general known for corrupt practices, Yuri Lutsenko, who happened to be in position to do a political favor for Trump.

“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?” Schiff said.

“Getting rid of Ambassador Yovanovitch helped set 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.”

Trump has denied wrongdoing.

Lutsenko played a key role, in Ukraine and in the American media, in advancing damaging and baseless narratives about Biden, while promoting a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukrainians colluded against Trump in the 2016 election.

Yovanovitch said that the United States had helped Ukraine make headway against corruption in recent years, but under Trump, the corrupt elements in Ukraine suddenly were empowered to the extent that they succeeded in removing a most inconvenient figure: her.

“When our anti-corruption efforts got in the way of a desire for profit or power, Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me,” she said. “What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a US Ambassador.

“How could our system fail like this? How is it that foreign corrupt interests could manipulate our government?”

Nancy Pelosi says Trump's actions toward Ukraine amount to 'bribery' Read more

Yovanovitch was “absolutely shocked, and devastated, frankly” to discover that Trump had singled her out in a July phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, calling her “bad news’”.

Yovanovitch briefly told the committee about her family’s refugee experience, fleeing the Soviet Union and then Nazi Germany to land in Canada, where Yovanovitch was born and lived till the age of three.

Trump’s defenders have pointed out that ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president and he may recall whom he pleases. Ranking member Devin Nunes dismissed Yovanovitch’s story as a mundane personnel matter.

“I’m not exactly sure what the ambassador is doing here today,” Nunes said. “This seems more appropriate for the subcommittee for human resources of the foreign affairs committee if there’s issues with employment.”

But the circumstances of the recall of Yovanovitch have undercut Republican claims that Trump’s differences with state department officials could be put down to policy.

On Twitter, Trump accused Yovanovitch of incompetence. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” he wrote.

In an astonishing moment of political theater, Schiff read the tweets to Yovanovitch in real time and asked her to reply.

“I don’t think I have such powers,” she said. “Not in Mogadishu, Somalia, and other places.”

Asked how it felt to be personally attacked by the president, Yovanovitch said, “the effect is intimidating.”

Schiff replied: “I want to let you know that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”

The campaign against Yovanovitch was plainly visible to state department officials abroad and in Washington. Multiple officials, including deputy assistant secretary of state George Kent and Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to the secretary of state Mike Pompeo, urged the state department to issue a statement of support for Yovanovitch, but were rebuffed, the men have testified.

Yovanovitch herself sought support from multiple state department figures, including one of the impeachment inquiry witnesses, undersecretary of state David Hale, who is schedule to testify next week.

The campaign against her, and the failure of the state department to issue a statement backing her, damaged her ability to carry out her work, Yovanovitch testified.