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went on Twitter to criticize
her and defend his right to
hire and fire ambassadors at
will. He claimed without evi-
dence “that everywhere
Marie Yovanovitch went
turned bad,” disparaging
her previous service in So-
malia as well as her work in
Ukraine.
Trump’s tweet marked a
stark change from his reac-
tion to the first hearing
Wednesday, when he was
silent on Twitter and said he
had not watched. He said
Friday he saw part of the
hearing and found it to be a
“disgrace.” Trump has de-
fended his actions regarding
Ukraine and dismissed the
impeachment inquiry as po-
litically motivated.
House Intelligence Com-
mittee Chairman Adam B.
Schiff (D-Burbank) paused
questioning Friday to read
the president’s tweet and de-
fend Yovanovitch’s 33-year
record. Asked to respond,
Yovanovitch said, “I can’t
speak to what the president
is trying to do. But the effect
is to be intimidating.”
Trump said later that he
did not think his tweet was
intimidating. But Schiff said
the committee would take
the issue “very, very seri-
ously.”
“We saw today witness in-
timidation in real time,”
Schiff said.
Yovanovitch said she be-
lieved her anti-corruption
efforts made her a target of
dishonest Ukrainians who
were opposed to U.S. efforts
to clean up the government
there. What shocked her, she
said, was that they appeared
to find allies in the Trump
administration and in the
president’s personal lawyer,
Rudolph W. Giuliani.
“What continues to
amaze me is that they found
Americans willing to part-
ner with them, and working
together, they apparently
succeeded in orchestrating
the removal of a U.S. ambas-
sador,” she said. “[I] do not
understand Mr. Giuliani’s
motives for attacking me,
nor can I offer an opinion on
whether he believed the alle-
gations he spread about
me.”
The career foreign serv-
ice officer has been portray-
ed by Democrats as the first
victim of Trump’s scheme in
Ukraine, and her testimony
gets to their narrative that
the president abused his
power in a way that dam-
aged U.S. interests. Yovano-
vitch was recalled by Trump
after a weeks-long campaign
by former Ukrainian officials
that was amplified by con-
servative media outlets,
Giuliani and the president’s
son Donald Trump Jr. The
abrupt removal came just
two months after she was
asked by the State Depart-
ment to stay on through
2020.
Trump’s attack on a well-
regarded career foreign ser-
vice employee while she was
testifying about efforts to
stop corruption overseas
was widely seen as a misstep.
Republicans said privately
they did not want to appear
to be bullying Yovanovitch
because it wouldn’t help
their cause.
“The president kind of
blew up any Republican plan
to treat the witness with re-
spect,” the former chairman
of the Intelligence Commit-
tee, Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.),
said on CNN. “It’s really kindof shocking.”
Former independent
counsel Kenneth Starr, who
led the impeachment in-
quiry into President Clinton,
called Trump’s tweet “quite
injurious.”
“I must say the president
was not advised by counsel
in deciding to do this tweet.
Extraordinarily poor judg-
ment,” he said on Fox News.
Trump’s attack on
Yovanovitch not only put
him in jeopardy of incurring
more charges in the im-
peachment case, it also
risked backfiring politically.
The president is increas-
ingly unpopular among sub-
urban women, who have
been upset by his track
record of attacking women
and could be a key demo-
graphic in the 2020 election.
Intelligence Committee
member Rep. Elise Stefanik
(R-N.Y.), speaking to report-
ers, said that she disagreed
with the president’s tweet,
but that it shouldn’t be the
focus of the hearing.
Trump ally Rep. Lee
Zeldin (R-N.Y.) offered sup-
port. “The president is going
to defend himself,” he said.
“It’s about the presidentwanting to ensure that the
entire story is getting out
there.”
White House spokes-
woman Stephanie Grisham
called the tweet “simply the
president’s opinion, which
he is entitled to.”
House Democrats are
weighing whether to file arti-
cles of impeachment against
the president after learning
he withheld $400 million in
aid to Ukraine and leveraged
a possible White House visit
to coerce newly elected
Ukrainian President Volody-
myr Zelensky into publicly
committing to investiga-
tions that could prove politi-
cally beneficial to Trump.
Trump wanted Ukraine
to look into baseless allega-
tions that the country inter-
fered in the 2016 U.S. election
and to investigate a natural
gas company that employed
Hunter Biden, son of a po-
tential 2020 Trump rival, for-
mer Vice President Joe Bid-
en. Ukrainians have said nei-
ther Biden is suspected of
any wrongdoing.
Democrats have tried to
show that sidelining Yova-
novitch created an opportu-
nity for Trump and Giulianito create a back channel that
allowed them to directly
press for the investigations.
The inquiry, which con-
tinues next week with three
days of public hearings, be-
gan with a whistleblower
complaint that raised con-
cerns about a July 25 phone
call between Trump and Ze-
lensky in which Trump re-
peatedly pressed for the in-
vestigations.
While thanking her for
her service, Republicans
largely dismissed Yovano-
vitch’s appearance as a
Democratic sideshow, not-
ing she was recalled months
before the July 25 call. She
testified she knew nothing
about the call or the delayed
aid, which was finally re-
leased in September.
The top GOP committee
member, Rep. Devin Nunes
(R-Tulare), questioned why
Yovanovitch was brought in
if she had no direct knowl-
edge of the events at hand.
“The ambassador is not a
material fact witness to any
of the accusations being
hurled” against Trump, he
said.
Yovanovitch, who has
served under both Demo-
crats and Republicans and
was known for her anti-cor-
ruption efforts in post-Sovi-
et countries, resisted Demo-
crats’ efforts to portray her
as a victim. “I’m a private
person; I don’t want to put
that all out there. But it’s
been very difficult,” she said
when asked how the ouster
affected her family.
“This is about far more
than me or a couple of indi-
viduals,” she added. “As for-
eign service professionals
are being denigrated and
undermined, the institution
is also being degraded. This
will soon cause real harm, if
it hasn’t already.”
Democrats voiced out-
rage on Yovanovitch’s be-
half. “I’m angry that a wom-
an like you would not only be
dismissed but humiliated by
the president of the United
States,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-
Conn.) said.
The audience in the hear-
ing room stood and ap-
plauded as Yovanovitch
walked out at the end of the
day.
Yovanovitch and other
State Department wit-nesses have told House in-
vestigators in closed-door
depositions that she was
driven out through an effort
to convince Trump and con-
servatives that she favored
Democrat Hillary Clinton in
the 2016 presidential elec-
tion. Transcripts of deposi-
tions show several others
have testified that the accu-
sations against Yovanovitch
have no basis in fact.
The State Department
declined to defend Yovano-
vitch against the smears de-
spite pleas from embassy
employees, other witnesses
have said. Yovanovitch said
she was told Secretary of
State Michael R. Pompeo
and the department would
not defend her because “it
could be undermined, that
the president might issue a
tweet contradicting it.”
As the hearing began, the
White House released a
summary of an April call in
which Trump congratulated
Zelensky for winning the
Ukrainian election. It does
not include discussion of
corruption in Ukraine,
something highlighted in
the White House readout of
the call released in April.
The White House did not re-
spond to questions about
the discrepancy.
Meanwhile, a State De-
partment employee con-
firmed in a closed-door dep-
osition Friday that he over-
heard Trump in a cellphone
call ask Gordon Sondland,
U.S. ambassador to the Eu-
ropean Union, about the
status of the “investiga-
tions,” according to Rep.
Ted Lieu (D-Torrance).
State Department official
David Holmes overheard
the call while having lunch
with Sondland and others in
a restaurant in Kyiv on July- Holmes’ boss, acting U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine
William B. Taylor Jr., told
lawmakers about the call
during his public testimony
earlier this week.
The testimony is further
evidence that Trump was
actively pushing Ukraine to
announce investigations.
Times staff writers Jennifer
Haberkorn, Eli Stokols and
Noah Bierman in Washing-
ton contributed to this
report.Trump blasts Yovanovitch as she testifies
[Yovanovitch,from A1]
MARIE YOVANOVITCHtestified that she was shocked that corrupt Ukrainians
apparently found allies in the Trump administration and in Rudolph W. Giuliani.Kirk McKoyLos Angeles TimesPORCELANOSA ANAHEIM
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