71become, out of opportunism or maybe even shared outlook, one
of them? Some people would. Most people would keep their
head down. Some number of people would be courageous and
do useful things. A smaller number would do recklessly useful
things. And then some number, hopefully also small, would take
advantage of the situation to help themselves.”
Masha Yovanovitch, like Andy McCabe, had no public profile
but was widely respected among colleagues. She joined the For-
eign Service in 1986, when she was 28 years old, and rose through
the ranks of the State Department to become the U.S. ambas-
sador to Kyrgyzstan, then Armenia, and then, in 2016, Ukraine.
At the embassy in Kyiv she became
known as a dedicated fighter of
the corruption rampant among
Ukrainian political and business
leaders. And, as with McCabe, her
professionalism left her vulnerable
when a gang of thugs set out to
destroy her career. Corruption,
the theme of her work in Ukraine,
was also the theme of its abrupt
end. “You’re going to think that
I’m incredibly naive,” she told the
House during her testimony, “but
I couldn’t imagine all the things
that have happened.”
In early March 2019, David
Hale, the undersecretary of state
for political affairs, paid a visit to
the embassy in Kyiv. He asked
Yovanovitch, who planned to end
her tour that summer and then
retire, to stay another year. With Ukrainian elections coming
up, the embassy couldn’t afford to be temporarily leaderless. She
thought about it overnight and agreed.
Two weeks later, on March 20, The Hill, a Washington news-
paper, published an interview with Yuriy Lutsenko, one of the
dirty Ukrainian prosecutors who had been thwarted by Yovano-
vitch. Lutsenko accused her of trying to stop legitimate prosecu-
tions. The article also reported that the ambassador was heard
to have openly criticized Trump. The president retweeted the
story, which was composed almost entirely of lies. It was fol-
lowed by several more articles filled with conspiracy theories
about Ukraine’s interference in the 2016 election on behalf of
Hillary Clinton. The reporter, John Solomon (who stands by
his stories), was getting his information from Giuliani and his
associates. Solomon had come to The Hill from Circa News, a
right-wing site that had published an identical falsehood about
McCabe—that he had openly trashed Trump in a meeting—two
years earlier. The Russia and Ukraine scandals are best understood
as a single web of corruption and abuse of office, and Solomon
is one of many strands connecting them.
Another is Joseph diGenova, a right-wing Washington law-
yer, former appointee of Barr, and friend of Giuliani’s who had
asserted in 2016 that FBI agents were furious with James Comey
for closing the Clinton investigation. On the same day the first
Hill story about Yovanovitch was published, di Genova appeared
on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and said that Yovanovitch “has
bad-mouthed the president of the United States to Ukrainian
officials and has told them not to listen or worry about Trump
policy because he’s going to be impeached. This woman needs
to be called home to the United States—” “Oh, immediately,”
Hannity interjected. Two nights later, Laura Ingraham repeated
the story on her show. Victoria Toensing, diGenova’s law part-
ner (and wife) and a frequent Fox News guest, texted one of
Giuliani’s cronies: “Is the Wicket [sic] Witch gone?” On March 24,
in a tweet, Donald Trump Jr. called
Yovanovitch a “joker.”
The State Department called
The Hill’s original story a “complete
fabrication.” But as the lies spread
among conservative media, trigger-
ing a barrage of attacks, Yovano-
vitch found herself in a crisis.
Hale, the department’s No. 3 and
its senior career diplomat, sent an
email to two colleagues: “I believe
Masha should deny on the record
saying anything disrespectful and
reaffirm her loyalty as Ambassador
and FSO to POTUS and Constitu-
tion.” Gordon Sondland, a Trump
donor who, with no relevant expe-
rience, had been made ambassador
to the European Union, gave her
the same advice directly. “Tweet
out there that you support the pres-
ident, and that all these are lies,” Yovanovitch recounted him saying
during her impeachment testimony. “You know the sorts of things
that he likes. Go out there battling aggressively and praise him.”
Yovanovitch felt that she couldn’t do it. Like Erica Newland, she
had taken an oath to defend the Constitution, not the president.
Instead of tweeting allegiance to Trump, Yovanovitch recorded a
public service announcement urging Ukrainians to vote in that
country’s upcoming presidential election. She tried to connect this
civic duty to her role as a nonpartisan government official. “Dip-
lomats like me make a pledge to serve whomever the American
people, our fellow citizens, choose,” she told the camera. Presidents
Bush and Obama had both appointed her to ambassadorships,
“and I promote and carry out the policies of President Trump and
his administration. This is one of the marks of a true democracy.”
Whatever impression this civics lesson made on Ukrainians, it
did nothing to stop the vicious campaign against her back home.
The United States was no longer the democracy that American
diplomats hold up as a model to foreigners.
On March 24, unable to function in her post, Yovanovitch
wrote a desperate email to David Hale. She asked for a statement
from the secretary of state saying that she had his full confidence,
that she spoke for the president and the country. Hale called
Yovanovitch that afternoon and asked her to put her concernsTRUMP NEEDED
SEVERAL YEARS TO
FIGURE OUT THAT
THE STATE DEPARTMENT
COULD BE AS
CORRUPTIBLE AS THE
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT,
AND AS USEFUL TO HIS
HOLD ON POWER.