Marie Yovanovitch is considered an important figure in the Ukraine affair. That's why their public hearings in the US Congress were eagerly awaited. But right at the beginning of their appearance, President Donald Trump began to attack the former ambassador with tweets.
Everything Yovanovitch "touched" had become "bad," Trump wrote. Moreover, presidents have the "absolute right" to fire ambassadors.
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. 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 US President's absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019Yovanovitch called the president's Twitter attack "daunting" during their appearance in Congress. The 61-year-old had said some time ago in public hearing under oath that she had felt threatened in the explosive telephone conversation of Trump with his Ukrainian colleague Volodymyr Selenskyj from July. Trump had said during the conversation that Yovanovitch would "go through some things". Yovanovitch said, "That sounded like a threat." When asked if she felt threatened, she replied, "I did."
With Yovanovitch's statement, Democrats in the House of Representatives continued their public hearings for a possible impeachment on Trump on Friday. On Wednesday, MPs had already questioned two witnesses in public - the first time since the impeachment investigation began in late September. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, speaks of references to "bribery". The word should be chosen wisely: The US Constitution calls bribery explicitly as an offense for impeachment.
Trump publishes another call log
Yovanovitch had been recalled prematurely at the insistence of Trump from her post as Ambassador to Kiev. The investigation is about the charge of abuse of power against Trump. He had tried to persuade Ukraine to investigate his domestic rival, Democrat Joe Biden. The Democrats want to open the way for a formal indictment of Trump by the House of Representatives - the so-called impeachment.
Yovanovitch was a victim of a "smear campaign" at the Friday hearing as a result of her involvement in the fight against corruption in Ukraine. She blamed corrupt Ukrainian officials and Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. "I do not understand Mr. Giuliani's motives for attacking me." Allegations that she told US Embassy staff or representatives of Ukraine that Trump's orders could be ignored for being dismissed are not true.
Yovanovitch said she received a call from the US State Department on the evening of April 24 during a reception at the embassy. She was asked to return to Washington on the next plane. There she was told that Trump had lost confidence in her. "It was awful to hear that, and there was no real reason why I had to leave."
Shortly before the hearing Trump published another minutes of a conversation with Selenskyj. In the conversation on April 21, Trump Selenskyj congratulated on his election victory, as the minutes show. Unlike in another telephone conversation on July 25, Trump Selenskyj did not encourage investigations in April that could have hurt his rival Joe Biden of the US Democrats. The phone call in April is essentially the exchange of friendly words.
The Democrats accuse the Republican president of having abused his power to persuade the Ukrainian government to interfere in his favor in the US election campaign. It is suspected that Trump used military aid to the country in the amount of about 400 million US dollars as leverage. From the point of view of the Democrats, Trump wanted to induce Ukraine to investigate that could harm his democratic rival Joe Biden. Trump calls the investigations a "witch hunt".