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Key Takeaways From Marie Yovanovitch’s Hearing in the Impeachment Inquiry
Marie Yovanovitch Hearing: What to Expect From Her Impeachment Inquiry Testimony
(30 days later)
Marie L. Yovanovitch recounted in powerful and personal terms on Friday the devastation and fear she felt as she was targeted first by President Trump’s allies and later by the president himself, saying she felt threatened.
As Democrats enter the second day of public impeachment hearings, Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, will testify publicly on Friday about the campaign by the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani that led to her ouster and her shock and anger about the effort to get her fired.
Removed from her post as ambassador to Ukraine, Ms. Yovanovitch said she was bereft when she came under fire from the president’s personal attorney and eldest son last spring, but was even more stunned in September when she learned that Mr. Trump himself had disparaged her in his now-famous July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president.
Who: Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine, will appear as the sole witness.
“It was a terrible moment,” she told the House Intelligence Committee on the second day of public impeachment hearings. “A person who saw me actually reading the transcript said that the color drained from my face. I think I even had a physical reaction. I think, you know, even now, words kind of fail me.”
What: The House Intelligence Committee, led by its chairman, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, continues to examine the case for impeaching President Trump.
In the July call, according to a rough transcript released by the White House, Mr. Trump called Ms. Yovanovitch “bad news” and said that “she’s going to go through some things.”
When and Where: The proceedings start at 9 a.m. Eastern in the vaulted, columned chambers of the Ways and Means Committee. We expect the hearing to last several hours.
Asked her reaction when she read that, Ms. Yovanovitch said: “Shocked. Appalled. Devastated that the president of the United States would talk about any ambassador like that to a foreign head of state — and it was me. I mean, I couldn’t believe it." Asked what the words “going to go through some things” sounded like to her, she said, “It sounded like a threat.”
How to Watch: The New York Times will stream the testimony live, and a team of reporters in Washington will provide real-time context and analysis of the events on Capitol Hill. Follow along at nytimes.com, starting a few minutes before 9.
At the very moment she was testifying about how Mr. Trump had denigrated her, the president was assailing Ms. Yovanovitch, insulting her diplomatic career and reasserting his right to remove her, prompting Democrats to suggest he was trying to intimidate a witness.
The former ambassador will deliver what Democrats hope will be moving testimony as she recounts her abrupt ouster after a relentless smear campaign by Mr. Giuliani.
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” he wrote on Twitter. “She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”
Ms. Yovanovitch, who goes by the nickname Masha, has already described how Mr. Giuliani and Trump allies accused her of undermining the president during the 2016 election, something she calls a scurrilous lie. In Ms. Yovanovitch’s telling, Mr. Giuliani saw her as an impediment to his agenda, which included pushing Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, the younger son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Trump’s tweet omitted the context in which he discussed Ms. Yovanovitch with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during their July 25 phone conversation, which actually came two months after she had been recalled from Ukraine. It was Mr. Trump who first criticized Ms. Yovanovitch, calling her “bad news.” Mr. Zelensky responded that he completely agreed with Mr. Trump and pointed out “you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador.”
An immigrant and a diplomat with more than 30 years of service, Ms. Yovanovitch was told to “get on the next plane,” a move she has said was based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.” Democrats expect her to describe the personal trauma she endured as the administration’s traditional diplomatic establishment in Ukraine collided with a rogue foreign policy operation run by Mr. Giuliani.
Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, interrupted the hearing to read Ms. Yovanovitch the tweet and ask her what she thought of it.
Ms. Yovanovitch has already appeared for a closed-door deposition in the inquiry. Read key excerpts from her testimony.
Ms. Yovanovitch, a tight smile on her face, appeared momentarily uncertain how to respond. “It’s very intimidating,” she said. She then paused, searching for words. “I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but the effect is to be intimidating.”
Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including the former vice president. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
Mr. Schiff responded in a stern tone that, “Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Intelligence panel, said it was an instance of “clear witness tampering” that could form the basis of an article of impeachment against Mr. Trump.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works, and here’s why political influence in foreign policy matters.
While Ms. Yovanovitch was removed from her post in Ukraine, she remains a State Department employee working in the government headed by Mr. Trump.
House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
At an unrelated event later in the day, Mr. Trump denied trying to intimidate Ms. Yovanovitch. “I want freedom of speech,” he told reporters, and lashed out at Democrats for conducting what he called an unfair impeachment process.
Read about the Democrats’ rules to govern impeachment proceedings.
Mr. Trump said he watched “a little bit” of the hearing and said “it’s really sad when you see people not allowed to ask questions,” referring to some squabbling between Mr. Schiff and Republican members about when they would get to ask their questions. “Nobody has such horrible due process,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s considered a joke all over Washington and all over the world.”
In the end, each of the Republicans was granted the same amount of time to ask questions as each Democrat.
As they opened their own questioning, Republicans on the committee and the party’s lead lawyer took a strikingly different approach to Ms. Yovanovitch than Mr. Trump, avoiding any personal attacks and instead stressing that she was removed before the main events under scrutiny took place.
Representative Devin Nunes of California, the lead Republican on the panel, and Steve Castor, the committee’s Republican counsel, made no effort to undercut the former ambassador’s credibility but instead emphasized that her experience, whether justified or not, had no real bearing on whether the president had committed high crimes and misdemeanors.
Mr. Nunes characterized her removal as an “employment disagreement” and said she was “not a material fact witness to any of the allegations that are being hurled at the president.”
He led her through a series of quick questions meant to demonstrate that she had left Ukraine before the suspension of American aid and before the July 25 phone call when Mr. Trump asked Mr. Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats. “I’m not exactly sure what the ambassador is doing here today,” Mr. Nunes said.
Several of the Republicans led Ms. Yovanovitch through a series of questions that produced largely dry, fireworks-free exchanges intended to help the president, making the points that her removal did not change American policy, that her career was not permanently damaged and that the president had well-founded reasons to be concerned about corruption in Ukraine.
But while the president suggested in his tweet on Friday that Ms. Yovanovitch was a bad diplomat, the House Republicans largely offered the opposite assessment. “We are lucky to have you in Foreign Service,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York.
While lawmakers pondered impeaching Mr. Trump, a jury in a courthouse only a few hundred yards away found the president’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. guilty of lying to the very same House Intelligence Committee.
Mr. Stone was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election in what prosecutors said was an effort to protect Mr. Trump. He was found guilty of lying to the House committee, trying to block the testimony of another potential witness, and concealing reams of evidence from investigators.
Prosecutors claimed he tried to thwart the committee’s work because the truth would have “looked terrible” for both the president and his campaign. In all, he faced seven felony charges and was found guilty on all counts.
Mr. Trump, having a bad day, vented frustration that his friend was convicted while his enemies have not been. Among those enemies he named: Mr. Schiff, the chairman of the House committee.
If generally reluctant to assail Ms. Yovanovitch, Republicans had no such hesitance about going after Hunter Biden, the son of the former vice president, in hopes of turning attention to what they portrayed as Democratic conflicts in Ukraine.
Republican lawmakers got Ms. Yovanovitch to say that when she was first nominated for her ambassador post by President Barack Obama, she was prepared for questions about Hunter Biden that might come up during her confirmation hearings. The younger Mr. Biden was on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, at the same time his father was managing policy toward Ukraine.
Ms. Yovanovitch testified that if questions came up about the situation, she was instructed to refer questions to the vice president’s office. Asked by Republicans why it would be a problem, she said, “It creates a concern that there would be an appearance of conflict of interest.”
Ms. Yovanovitch suggested that “the smear campaign against me” by Mr. Trump allies was orchestrated in tandem with corrupt Ukrainians leading to her removal from her post based on untrue allegations.
Ms. Yovanovitch flatly denied the “baseless allegations” raised against her by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, and others working with him. She called them part of a “campaign of disinformation” that was orchestrated with Ukrainians because she was a powerful advocate of fighting corruption.
“Mr. Giuliani should have known those claims were suspect, coming as they reportedly did from individuals with questionable motives and with reason to believe that their political and financial ambitions would be stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine,” she told the House Intelligence Committee as it opened its second day of public impeachment hearings.
She added: “If our chief representative is kneecapped, it limits our effectiveness to safeguard the vital national security interests of the United States.”
Ms. Yovanovitch went on to say that the State Department’s failure to defend her and others subjected to partisan attacks had a profoundly negative impact on the institution as a whole.
“This is about far, far more than me or a couple of individuals,” she said. “As Foreign Service professionals are being denigrated and undermined, the institution is also being degraded. This will soon cause real harm, if it hasn’t already.”
As the hearing was about to be gaveled to a start on Friday morning, the White House released a rough transcript of another phone call that Mr. Trump had with Ukraine’s president in an effort to demonstrate that there was nothing untoward in that conversation.
Mr. Nunes read the record of the conversation out loud as part of his opening statement in sort of a dramatic re-enactment of the conversation.
The record documented an April 21 call that Mr. Trump made from Air Force One to Mr. Zelensky congratulating him on his election. That call came three months before the July 25 call in which the president asked Mr. Zelensky to do him “a favor” and investigate Democrats including Mr. Biden.
The record of the original call reflected just a few minutes of pleasantries. “When you’re settled in and ready, I’d like to invite you to the White House,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll have a lot of things to talk about, but we’re with you all the way.”
“Well, thank you for the invitation,” Mr. Zelensky replied. “We accept the invitation and look forward to the visit.”
According to the record, Mr. Trump made no mention of the desired investigations that he would raise later, but the promise of a White House meeting became a point of contention in the months to come. Text messages and testimony have indicated that the White House held up scheduling the promised meeting until Ukraine agreed to investigate Democrats.
The new White House record conflicted with the readout of the call that the White House put out to the media at the time. The official readout in April said that Mr. Trump “underscored the unwavering support of the United States for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and expressed support for efforts “to root out corruption.” According to the record released on Friday, Mr. Trump made no mention of either of those points.
