Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch has told Congress that attacks from corrupt interests have created a crisis at the State Department.
Yovanovitch is testifying openly before the House Intelligence Committee in its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
She told lawmakers that she was the victim of “a campaign of disinformation” that used “unofficial back channels” leading to her removal from Ukraine. She says it “continues to amaze” her that Americans partnered with “Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old corrupt rules” in pushing for her removal.
Yovanovitch is also sounding alarm that senior State Department officials did not defend her from attacks from the president’s allies, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. She is telling lawmakers about a “crisis in the State Department.”
She says: “The State Department is being hollowed out from within at a competitive and complex time on the world stage.”
Yovanovitch says she was devastated when she learned President Trump wanted to remove her from her post.
A top State Department official told Yovanovitch in April to come back to Washington from Ukraine “on the next plane.’’
Yovanovitch told Congress that Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan “said the words that every foreign service officer” fears: “‘The president has lost confidence in you.’ That was a terrible thing to hear.”
Sullivan told her that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “was no longer able to protect” her from attacks led by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Yovanovitch said the call “made me feel terrible. After 33 years of service to our country ... it was not the way I wanted my career to end.”
Other diplomats testifying in the investigation have defended Yovanovitch, saying she was the target of “smear” campaign by the president’s allies. She has served both Democratic and Republican presidents.
The rare impeachment inquiry is focused on Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. Democrats say it amounts to bribery, as the president withheld military aid to Ukraine while he pushed the country to investigate rival Democrats, including Joe Biden.
Trump calls the probe a hoax and says he did nothing wrong.
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff says Yovanovitch was “smeared and cast aside” by President Donald Trump because she was considered an obstacle to his personal and political agenda.
Opening the second public House impeachment hearing, Schiff said the question isn’t whether Trump could recall Yovanovitch but “why would he want to?”
Yovanovitch testified behind closed doors last month that she was told to “watch her back” before she was ousted in May as Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani led a shadow foreign policy.
Schiff said pushback at the State Department failed when it became clear that Trump wanted her gone.
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes said the hearings were “spectacles” for Democrats to “advance their operation to topple a duly elected president."
Nunes then read aloud a memo circulated by the White House that summarizes the first conversation between President Donald Trump and his newly elected Ukrainian counterpart.
The first conversation took place in April after the election of Volodymyr Zelenskiy. It consists largely of pleasantries and words of congratulations.
The White House made a record of the conversation public at the start of the House impeachment hearing on Friday.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee chairman, said Trump should also "release the thousands of other records that he has instructed the State Department not to release.”
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Yovanovitch says President Trump’s tweets about her during her testimony in the impeachment hearings are “very intimidating” to her and other witnesses.
Trump tweeted about Yovanovitch as she was answering questions from lawmakers, noting that she’d once served in Somalia and adding, “How did that go?” He tweeted: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.”
Yovanovitch responded to Trump’s charge, saying, “I don’t think I have such powers.” She said she and her colleagues have improved conditions in places where they’ve served.
