A4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 , 2019
istration withheld a planned
White House meeting that Zel-
ensky had sought as a signal of
U.S.-Ukraine solidarity in the face
of Russian aggression in eastern
Ukraine. Later, in July, the ad-
ministration also halted the flow
of hundreds of millions of dollars
in U.S. security assistance to help
Ukraine defend itself.
The State Department’s lack of
support for Yovanovitch infuriat-
ed senior leaders including
McKinley, who testified that he
urged department officials to is-
sue a public statement in support
of the ambassador.
McKinley said that he raised
the idea directly with Pompeo on
Sept. 26 after the release of the
Trump-Zelensky transcript but
that Pompeo did not respond to
the suggestion. Two days later,
McKinley emailed other senior
officials proposing a “strong and
immediate statement of support
for Ambassador Yovanovitch’s
professionalism and courage.”
A few hours later, one of the
recipients of McKinley’s email, a
State Department spokesman,
called to say that Pompeo had
rejected the idea, citing a desire to
protect Yovanovitch from “undue
attention.”
McKinley resigned 12 days lat-
er.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Rachael Bade, Julie Tate, Mike
DeBonis, Shane Harris and John
Hudson contributed to this report.records and testimony from con-
gressional investigators.
Officials with the Office of Man-
agement and Budget were sched-
uled to testify before the House
impeachment probe this week
about OMB’s involvement in with-
holding military aid and other aid
from Ukraine, but the witnesses
have so far refused to appear.
Former national security ad-
viser John Bolton has also been
asked to testify this week, but he
and his former deputy, Charles
Kupperman, have indicated that
they are awaiting a court ruling
on whether to comply with a
House subpoena or abide by
White House demands that they
not testify.
A federal judge on Monday
agreed to Kupperman’s request
that final arguments in the case
be held on Dec. 10.
Yovanovitch remains with the
State Department, though she
now holds a fellowship position
at Georgetown University. After
her removal, Trump empowered
a trio of other officials — Sond-
land, special representative to
Ukraine Kurt Volker and Energy
Secretary Rick Perry — to assert
control over the U.S.-Ukraine re-
lationship in coordination with
Giuliani.
Sondland and Volker led an
effort in the ensuing months to
secure a commitment from Zel-
ensky to investigate an energy
company that had employed
Biden’s son Hunter as a board
member.
As leverage, the Trump admin-brief reprieve followed.
Ultimately, the most direct
warning about the hostility to-
ward Yovanovitch came not from
U.S. officials but from a high-
ranking Ukrainian concerned
that his country was also about to
be victimized. In February,
Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen
Avakov, told Yovanovitch that he
had been contacted by Giuliani
and that the president’s attorney
was working closely with two
Ukrainian American business-
men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fru-
man, on efforts to dig up dirt on
Biden that were troubling to offi-
cials in the new Ukraine govern-
ment, she said.
Avakov said that for Kyiv to be
drawn “into U.S. domestic poli-
tics was a dangerous place for
Ukraine to be,” Yovanovitch testi-
fied. He also warned her that the
Giuliani-led group appeared de-
termined to force her out and
“told me I really need to watch my
back,” she said.
Two months later, Yovanovitch
said, she was summoned abruptly
back to Washington and told that
while she had done nothing
wrong, Trump had “lost confi-
dence” in her and that her posi-
tion as ambassador was unten-
able.
Parnas and Fruman were ar-
rested last month at Dulles Air-
port and charged with U.S. cam-
paign finance violations. They
have pleaded not guilty. On Mon-
day, an attorney for Parnas told
Reuters that Parnas is now pre-
pared to comply with requests forin Ukraine, and Lutsenko “clearly
wanted to work around the sys-
tem,” she said. Within weeks, she
faced a smear campaign that ap-
peared orchestrated by Giuliani
and Lutsenko and accused her of
undermining Trump’s agenda
with Ukraine and giving Lutsen-
ko a “do-not-prosecute” list
aimed at protecting corrupt offi-
cials.
Yovanovitch vehemently de-
nied the allegations, and Lutsen-
ko later recanted the latter claim.
Yovanovitch testified that Giu-
liani’s animus toward her was
also driven by the embassy’s deci-
sion during her tenure to deny a
U.S. visa to another Ukrainian
prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
Consular staffers at the embas-
sy blocked the application be-
cause of Shokin’s “known corrupt
activities,” Yovanovitch testified.
“And the next thing we knew,
Mayor Giuliani was calling the
White House” to inform Trump
loyalists that Yovanovitch was de-
nying entry to a Ukrainian who
could provide Trump “informa-
tion about corruption at the em-
bassy, including my corruption.”
Yovanovitch frequently ap-
pealed to State Department offi-
cials in Washington for help fend-
ing off these attacks on her integ-
rity, but the department’s re-
sponse under Pompeo was
muted. At one point, she said,
either Pompeo or another senior
official contacted Fox News host
Sean Hannity to ask the network
to suspend its criticism of the
ambassador. She testified that apushed Zelensky to pursue inves-
tigations of former vice president
Joe Biden and his family and help
substantiate conspiratorial
claims about Ukrainian interfer-
ence in the 2016 U.S. election.
Yovanovitch said that late last
year she began to hear cryptic
warnings from Ukrainian offi-
cials in touch with her staff that
Giuliani was in talks with
Ukraine’s then-prosecutor gener-
al, Yuri Lutsenko, “and that they
had plans, and that they were
going to, you know, do things,
including to me.”
Lutsenko was chafing at U.S.
pressure to crack down on
Ukraine’s notorious corruption
problems and help recover more
than $40 billion that had been
embezzled by senior officials in
the previous administration. Yo-
vanovitch was one of the main
conduits of a stream of messages
expressing dissatisfaction with
Lutsenko, and she testified that
he and Giuliani began “looking to
hurt me” through false allega-
tions.
At the same time, Lutsenko
was desperately seeking help
from Yovanovitch in arranging
high-level meetings for him with
members of Trump’s Cabinet,
trips to Washington that he possi-
bly hoped would lead to a Trump
endorsement of Ukraine’s then-
president, Petro Poroshenko,
who was trailing in his race
against Zelensky.
The Lutsenko-Giuliani “part-
nership,” she testified, ran coun-
ter to U.S. anti-corruption effortspected to include public question-
ing of Yovanovitch and other key
figures.
Yovanovitch’s deposition de-
scribes the involvement of Ru-
dolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s per-
sonal attorney, in the early stages
of what became a coordinated
campaign to coerce the new lead-
er of Ukraine to investigate
Trump’s political opponents.
Yovanovitch’s account was
augmented by the separate re-
lease of the impeachment deposi-
tion of Michael McKinley, a for-
mer senior adviser to Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo who resigned
his position last month in protest
over how Yovanovitch and others
caught up in the Ukraine scandal
were being treated.
Both transcripts provide fresh
insights into the hostility Yovano-
vitch faced while serving in the
Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and the
fallout among career officials at
the State Department when it
became clear that Pompeo had no
intention of intervening to pro-
tect the ambassador or issue a
public statement supporting her.
McKinley also testified he was
concerned the State Department
was being dragged into an at-
tempted shakedown of a sover-
eign country.
The testimony of the two ca-
reer State Department officials
also describes indignities that
would once have seemed un-
thinkable in the U.S. Foreign Ser-
vice.
At one point, Yovanovitch said,
she was advised by a colleague to
turn to Twitter to improve her
standing with the president be-
fore it was too late. The advice
came from the U.S. ambassador
to the European Union, Gordon
Sondland, who became em-
broiled in Trump’s attempt to
pressure Ukraine for political dirt
after Yovanovitch’s ouster.
“You need to go big or go
home,” Sondland told Yovano-
vitch, she recalled in her testimo-
ny. “You need to, you know, tweet
out there that you support the
president and that [claims that
she was disloyal] are lies.” Yo-
vanovitch said she felt it was not
appropriate for someone in her
position to write such a tweet.
In an exchange with reporters
at the White House on Monday,
Trump said he does not really
know Yovanovitch and that, de-
spite his statements about her to
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky, “I’m sure she’s a very
fine woman.”
The casual nature of Trump’s
comment about an ambassador
whose career he effectively ended
stands in contrast to the sense of
disbelief that emerged from both
transcripts.
“You’re going to think that I’m
in cred ibly naive,” Yovanovitch
said of the sequence of events
before and after her May ouster,
“but I couldn’t imagine all of the
things that have happened over
the last five or seven months — I
just couldn’t imagine it.”
Yovanovitch was among the
first in a series of witnesses who
have appeared before the im-
peachment inquiry over the past
two months, in closed-door hear-
ings that have produced damag-
ing revelations about Trump’s ef-
fort to extract political favors
from the Ukrainian government.
That effort culminated in the
July 25 call in which Trump
TRANSCRIPTS FROM A
Ex-ambassador describes lack of support from State Dept.
ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, center, leaves Capitol Hill after 10 hours of testimony before House impeachment investigators on Oct. 11. The transcript of that
testimony was released Monday. “I couldn’t imagine all of the things that have happened,” Yovanovitch said of the sequence of events before and after her May ouster.serving as ambassador to
Ukraine.
Other Republicans pressed Yo-
vanovitch for her opinion of a
Ukrainian lawmaker who has
pushed anti-Biden accusations,
and they tried to pin her on
whether she personally inter-
vened to influence any Ukrainian
prosecutions — effectively pick-
ing up a line of argument that
Giuliani, the president’s lawyer,
used against Yovanovitch to push
for her ouster.
They repeatedly asked her
what she knew about Hunter
Biden’s business arrangement
with the Ukrainian energy com-
pany Burisma and how closely
she worked with former vice
president Joe Biden. She said she
met the elder Biden only once
during her time as ambassador to
Ukraine but met him “several
times over the course of our many
years in government.”
The transcripts showed how,
after hours and hours of testimo-
ny, the lawmakers could get
punchy — and the room could get
stuffy.
At one point, Schiff assured
those in the room that the air
conditioning would be turned on.
“My staff tells me it started to
smell like a locker room in here,”
he said.
[email protected]
[email protected]that may have happened.”
“She’s not going to answer
that,” said her attorney, Lawrence
Robbins.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a
member of the conservative Free-
dom Caucus, pressed Yovano-
vitch on whether she had rela-
tionships with a Ukrainian oli-
garch who had donated to the
Clinton Foundation. She said yes,
but only because of his role in
Ukrainian politics and hers as
ambassador.
Perry also asked if her embassy
had “monitored” conservative
media figures and individuals
close to the president, such as
Donald Trump Jr., Laura Ingra-
ham, Sean Hannity, Rudolph W.
Giuliani and a handful of other
Trump lawyers.
To each, she answered, “I don’t
know.”
Similarly, the transcript shows
Jordan, whose office is running
point for the GOP during the
impeachment probe, spending
considerable effort trying to de-
termine whether Yovanovitch’s
communications with other wit-
nesses were proper. He seemed
focused on her conversations
with Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State George Kent, who told
Yovanovitch about Trump’s
July 25 call with Ukrainian Presi-
dent Volodymyr Zelensky despite
the fact that she was no longerinquiries and process,” he said
after Meadows tried to argue that
“there are no rules that would
give the authority of you to actu-
ally depose this witness... you’re
out of order.”
Republicans alleged early in
Yovanovitch’s interview that the
witnesses were corrupting the
process by leaking information to
the news media before commit-
tee staffers were able to review it.
They pressed Yovanovitch and
her lawyer on whether she even
had the authority to testify, given
that the State Department had
ordered its employees not to com-
ply with congressional requests.
Yovanovitch left her post as am-
bassador in May but remains an
agency employee.
“Do you believe you’re autho-
rized to testify here today on
behalf of the State Department?”
asked Steve Castor, an attorney
for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Her attorney acknowledged
that she had been directed not to
appear but said she was not
advised about how to respond to
a congressional subpoena.
Castor also asked Yovanovitch
and her lawyer if they knew how a
copy of her opening statement
came to be published by The Post
as the closed-door interview was
barely underway. Castor told her
that Republican members “asked
me to ascertain if you know howRussia investigation.
Yovanovitch, who as an ambas-
sador did not have such power,
seemed confused by the refer-
ence.
“Is that a technical term?” she
asked.
Meadows was among the most
assertive Republican inquisitors,
the transcripts show. He stuck
largely to questioning the legiti-
macy of the process and trying to
ferret out whether Yovanovitch
or her sources harbored anti-
Trump bias. He asked about the
origins of her nickname “Masha,”
querying, “Where did you get
that name from?”
“Well, despite my posting to
Ukraine, I’m actually half Rus-
sian, and it’s a Russian nick-
name,” said Yovanovitch.
Meadows then abruptly com-
pleted his round of questioning.
“I yield back,” he said.
The transcript showed Demo-
crats and Republican staffers try-
ing to focus on the central issues
surrounding her knowledge of
the Trump administration’s rela-
tions with Ukraine, with Schiff
imploring GOP lawmakers over
and over to leave their com-
plaints about process and bias at
the door.
“We’re going to move forward
with the deposition rather than
address the mischaracterizations
of both impeachment history andviously reported that Republi-
cans have used the process to ask
probing questions about the
whistleblower whose complaint
sparked the inquiry — and whose
identity and alleged political mo-
tives have become a focus of
Trump and his allies — and to try
to find evidence substantiating
conspiracy theories surrounding
a Ukrainian role in the 2016
election.
But the newly released tran-
scripts from Yovanovitch and
McKinley — who appeared on
Oct. 11 and Oct. 16, respectively —
underscore how the Republicans’
strategy at that relatively early
stage in the deposition process
was more scattershot, covering a
range of topics.
GOP lawmakers during those
two days touched not only on
Ukraine’s ties to the Bidens but
also on potential connections to
Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary
Clinton. One line of questioning
appeared to suggest, without any
evidence, that Yovanovitch might
have improperly dealt in classi-
fied information, including a
question about whether she ever
sought to “unmask” the identity
of individuals protected in gov-
ernment reports. The term
echoed Republican complaints
from three years ago that Trump
aides’ identities had been unfair-
ly revealed as part of the FBI’sa public comment about witness
testimony the day before.
“Obviously, we’ve talked about
confidentiality in here,” said Rep.
Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top
Trump ally. “... Is that a violation
of the House rules?”
The Democrats’ point man on
the inquiry, Rep. Adam B. Schiff
(Calif.), demurred, noting that he
had told lawmakers not to dis-
cuss what happened in the depo-
sitions. But Republicans couldn’t
let it go.
“I, like my colleague here,
share the concerns,” said. Rep.
Michael McCaul (R-Tex.). “We
need clarification on the rules
that apply to confidentiality.”
The release of the two tran-
scripts Monday marked a new
milestone in the Democrats’ in-
vestigation, which has thus far
taken place largely out of public
view.
While opening statements and
some comments from witnesses
have been unofficially released
and captured in media reports,
the transcribed exchanges
among lawmakers, congressional
staffers, the two witnesses and
their lawyers mark the first time
that the dynamics inside the
hearing room have been fully
apparent.
The Washington Post has pre-
IMPEACHMENT FROM A
Transcripts of testimony illuminate dynamics inside House hearing room