Day Two of public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump featured a career diplomat with a soft voice and a powerful story.
Former US Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch said she felt threatened by the president as she detailed the story of being abruptly recalled from her post as US ambassador to Ukraine. Then the president attacked her with a tweet, which she said was intimidating.
Some key takeaways from Yovanovitch’s testimony:
Political is personal
This was no staid, bureaucratic tale told by a distant and removed narrator.
Yovanovitch’s account was, instead, deeply personal, layered with outrage over having been “kneecapped” by lies and her abrupt recall in a 1am phone call from a country she said was vital to US interests.
After a “smear campaign” she said involved Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and was amplified by cable news hosts and the president’s oldest son, Donald Jr., she was directed in April 2019 to come from Ukraine to the United States on the next plane because she no longer had the confidence of the president.
“I remain disappointed that the (State) Department’s leadership and others have declined to acknowledge that the attacks against me and others are dangerously wrong,” Yovanovitch said.
She counted herself among the professional public servants who she said serve US interests regardless of who occupies the White House, and, wrapping her testimony in historical context, invoked the diplomats who were killed in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, tortured in captivity in Iran and injured in mysterious attacks in Cuba.
“We honor these individuals. They represent each one of you here — and every American. These courageous individuals were attacked because they symbolized America,” she said.
'Very initimdating'
While Republicans said Yovanovitch was in effect peripheral to the impeachment inquiry, she drew direct connections to the president.
Yovanovitch left no doubt that she interpreted some of the Trump’s cryptic comments about her — “she’s going to go through some things,” among them — in the most chilling way.
“It didn’t sound good,” she said. “It sounded like a threat.”
She said the effect of the president’s comments — including a disparaging tweet as the hearing got underway — “is very intimidating” not just for her but for others who might be similarly inclined root out corruption.
Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, read Trump’s tweet to Yovanovitch and suggested it was part of a campaign of “witness intimidation”.
“Well, I want to let you know, Ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
Trump, asked about it later, said, “I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech.”