Donald Trump braces for ANOTHER televised impeachment hearing as the ambassador to Ukraine he fired testifies to Congress about the ‘smear’ campaign she says his lawyer Rudy Giuliani waged against her
- Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, is set to testify Friday before the House Intelligence Committee
- Yovanovitch already spoke to lawmakers behind closed doors last month as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry
- Yovanovitch talked about a campaign by Rudy Giuliani and a group of Ukrainians to oust her from her role as ambassador to the country
Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Intelligence Committee Friday, in day No. 2 of the public impeachment proceedings.
While Wednesday’s impeachment witnesses Bill Taylor and George Kent played to the head – the duo of long-time public servants talked at length about American foreign policy in Ukraine –
Yovanovitch’s testimony is expected to tug at the heart.
She’s expected to re-tell the dramatic saga of her dismissal from her diplomatic post in Kiev – and point a finger at Rudy Giuliani, who she says was in cahoots with a top Ukrainian prosecutor, with both men wanting her gone.
Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies Friday in the second public impeachment hearing by the House Intelligence Committee
Lawmakers will also interview David Holmes behind closed doors on Friday. Holmes is the aide of Taylor who reportedly heard Trump call Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, and ask about ‘investigations.’
That tidbit was new to the committees investigating impeachment as of Wednesday’s hearing.
In October, Yovanovitch sat down with lawmakers from the three committees tasked with impeachment proceedings and told the story of her dismissal.
She said about a year ago – in November or December 2018 – she was warned by Ukrainian officials that President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was up to something.
‘Basically, it was people in the Ukrainian government who said that Mr. Lutsenko, the former prosecutor general, was in communication with Mayor Giuliani, and that they had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me,’ Yovanovitch told members of Congress.
Yuri Lutsenko’s predecessor Viktor Shokin is the prosecutor that then Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire because he wasn’t doing enough to root out corruption.
President Donald Trump says he didn’t watch Wednesday’s blockbuster hearing but railed against it anyway
Top U.S. diplomats accused Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani of running a ‘smear’ campaign to force out Yavonovitch, who was recalled from her post to Washington. She says no reason was ever provided for her ouster
Yovanovitch explained that she believed Lutsenko was ‘looking to hurt [her] in the U.S.’ because she continued to pressure him to go after corruption, but that effort had stalled. ‘And so, we continued to encourage him, and I don’t think he really appreciated it,’ she said.
Lutsenko, she said, tried to set up meetings with the U.S. attorney general and with the FBI, she would reroute him to the FBI’s legal attaché at the embassy. Yovanovitch said Lutsenko was trying to give them information, which she came to believe was dirt on herself.
She’ll also testify that Giuliani was talking to Ukrainian officials about Biden as early as February 2019 – and that she believed the aim of these conversations was to hurt the former vice president should he announce a presidential run.
Biden threw his hat into the ring in late April.
‘Yeah, I mean, looking backwards to what happened in the past, with a view to finding things that could be possibly damaging to a presidential run,’ Yovanovitch said.
She said Ukrainian Minister of the Interior Arsen Avakov ‘told me I really needed to watch my back.’ Yovanovitch was told by Avakov that Giuliani had partnered with two Florida-based Ukrainians Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman – they’ve since been arrested on campaign finance violations – and were in discussions with Lutsenko. ‘And they were very interested in having a different ambassador at post, I guess for – because they wanted to have business dealings in Ukraine, or additional business dealings.’
‘And I didn’t understand that because nobody at the embassy had ever met those two individuals,’ she continued. ‘And, you know, one of the biggest jobs of an American ambassador of the U.S. embassy is to promote U.S. business.’
She called what was happening ‘exceedingly strange.’
She then tussled with Giuliani over getting a visa for Shokin, as the Trump lawyer wanted to talk to the ousted prosecutor about ‘corruption.’ Yovanovitch testified that she believed this included chatter about her.
As this was happening, Yovanovitch was left in a lurch.
When The Hill printed Ukrainian smears about her – and she requested Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to intervene – she was told ‘that there was concern that the rug would be pulled out from under the State Department.’
‘By whom?’ a lawmaker asked, according to the transcript.
‘The president,’ Yovanovitch replied.
She sought advice from Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, who had been a Trump donor. Sondland would eventually be a point guy on Ukraine.
He suggested to tweet something nice.
‘You need to, you know, tweet out there that you support the President, and that all these are lies and everything else,’ Yovanovitch testified she was told.
Yovanovitch’s tenure in Ukraine came to a dramatic end.
First on April 24 and then into the early hours of April 25, Director General of the Foreign Service Carol Perez made two calls to Yovanovitch. In the first she advised Yovanovitch to board the ‘next plane home to Washington.’ And hour later Perez called again. ‘She said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next plane home to Washington. And I was like, what? What happened? And she said, I don’t know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately. You need to come home on the next plane,’ Yovanovitch recalled.
She had been recalled and told by Acting Assistant Secretary of State Philip T. Reeker that Pompeo ‘was no longer able to’ protect her from the president.
‘That apparently, as I stated in my statement, the President had been – had wanted me to leave since July of 2018 and – or the summer, I should say, the middle of the summer of 2018 – and that the Secretary had tried to protect me but was no longer able to do that,’ she testified.
Her reaction, she said, was ‘shocked’ – and she assumed Lutsenko and Giuliani were behind it.
The president’s view of Yovanovitch was cemented after the White House released the so-called transcript of Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This was the conversation that worried the whistleblower that put the impeachment investigation into action.
On the call, Trump is quoted saying that Yovanovitch, ‘the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news.’ Trump added, ‘Well, she’s going to go through some things.’
Yovanovitch told the lawmakers she was again ‘shocked.’ ‘I didn’t know what it meant,’ she said of Trump’s last utterance. ‘I was very concerned. I still am.’
Asked if she felt threatened she answered ‘yes.’
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