President Donald Trump on November 15 tweeted an attack against the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine while she was in the middle of testifying in his impeachment probe, prompting her to complain she was being intimidated.
The President’s furious tweet came as Marie Yovanovitch testified in the House of Representatives about her abrupt firing from her post in Ukraine following an alleged smear campaign by Mr. Trump’s allies.
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Mr. Trump said, finishing his tweet with a reminder that Presidents have the “absolute right” to hire and fire ambassadors.
Adding to the extraordinary nature of the President commenting on testimony against him in real time, Ms. Yovanovitch was asked to respond on live television.
She called the tweet “very intimidating”.
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch is sworn in before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as part of the impeachment inquiry into Donald trump, in Wahington on November 15, 2019.
“I can't speak to what the President is trying to do but the effect is to be intimidated,” she said.
Mr. Trump suggested that her earlier work as a US diplomat in Somalia was linked to the country's decades of catastrophic instability.
“She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” he tweeted.
“I don't think I have such powers, not in Mogadishu and Somalia and not in other places,” the visibly shaken Ms. Yovanovitch told the impeachment committee hearing her testimony.
“I actually think that where I've served over the years I and others have demonstrably made things better, you know, for the U.S. as well as for the countries that I've served in.”
The impeachment inquiry in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives centers on accusations that Mr. Trump froze U.S. military aid in an effort to get Ukraine to launch political investigations against his potential 2020 election rival Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.
The investigation threatens to make Mr. Trump the third U.S. President to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, although the Senate — where Republicans enjoy a majority — would need to convict him to remove him from office.
Trump releases record of friendly first Zelensky call
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump sought to bolster his case that he did nothing wrong in Ukraine by releasing the reconstruction of a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which they exchanged little more than pleasantries.
The growing impeachment case against Mr. Trump revolves around a later phone call in which the U.S. President asks Mr. Zelensky for a “favour” by opening a corruption investigation allegedly aimed at Mr. Biden.
Unlike that controversial discussion, which took place July 25, the newly released call, held three months earlier, contains no mention of the Biden family.
Instead, Mr. Trump congratulates the just elected Ukrainian President, who in turn tries to persuade his U.S. counterpart to attend the upcoming inauguration.
Mr. Trump dangles out the possibility of a later Zelensky visit to the White House and says how much he admires Ukraine, referring to when he owned the Miss Universe franchise.
“When I owned Miss Universe, they always had great people,” he said.
Although Mr. Trump called the April 21 phone log a “transcript”, it is not a verbatim transcription made from a recording, but a reconstruction based on notes taken by staff in the room.
Published - November 15, 2019 09:17 pm IST
