Witness intimidation and a gutted State Dept

A smear campaign, witness intimidation and a gutted State Dept.: What we learned in Friday’s hearing

We've posted the biggest developments from today's hearing.

By NATASHA BERTRAND, CAITLIN OPRYSKO, QUINT FORGEY and NAHAL TOOSI

In an extraordinary moment during the impeachment hearings, the ousted Ukraine ambassador was asked to respond in real time to a Twitter broadside from President Donald Trump in which he accused her without evidence of causing destruction during her diplomatic tours.

"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," Marie Yovanovitch said when Trump's tweets were read out loud during Friday's impeachment hearing.

It was an attack House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff called "witness intimidation," and which Democrats were seizing on as potential obstruction by the president.

It was one of the most striking moments in a day of bombshell testimony.

Republicans seemed to decide fairly quickly that attacking Yovanovitch was not a smart strategy. Several praised her instead, though at least one threw in a startling insinuation.

Rep. Elise Stefanik made sure to praise Yovanovitch's service in Mogadishu after President Donald Trump implied on Twitter that Yovanovitch's long-ago stint in Somalia may have contributed to that country's chaos.

Along the way, the Republicans stressed that although Yovanovitch was recalled as an ambassador, she wasn't fired from the Foreign Service. She's now teaching at Georgetown and still on the State Department's payroll.

Rep. Mike Conaway, though, took an unusual tack. He noted the praise many of Yovanovitch's colleagues have offered her, including George Kent, a top State Department official who testified earlier in the impeachment inquiry.

"Any reason on Earth that you can think of that George Kent would be saying that because of some reason other than the fact that he believes that in his heart of hearts?" Conaway asked.

"Like what?" Yovanovitch asked.

"Well, I mean, like somebody paid him to do it," Conaway said.

"No. Absolutely not," a surprised Yovanovitch replied.

Yovanovitch pushes back on ‘adversarial’ relationship with prosecutor

Yovanovitch pushed back on GOP counsel Steve Castor’s depiction of her relationship with Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko as “adversarial.” But she noted that he ignored entreaties from the U.S. to prosecute the corruption cases that he’d promised to pursue when he took office, which was likely a reason that he had “animus” toward her and the U.S. embassy.

“When I say adversarial, that’s a really strong word,” she said.

“We at the US embassy — and visiting key people from the State Department and other agencies — we were pushing Ukrainians, including Lutsenko, to do what they said what they were going to do when Mr. Lutsenko entered office. That he was going to clean up the PGO [Prosecutor General’s Office] and make reforms, that he was going to bring justice to the Heavenly Hundred, the people who died on the Maidan in 2014, the Revolution of Dignity, and he was going to prosecute cases to repatriate the approximately $40 billion it is believed [former] President Yanukovych and his cronies fled the country with.

And he didn’t do any of that. We kept encouraging him to do the right thing, that’s what the Ukrainian people wanted him to do.”

Hillary Clinton and Ken Starr slam Trump’s Twitter attack

Democratic members savaged Trump for his real-time Twitter salvo against Yovanovitch, while most Republican lawmakers defended the president to reporters.

Several high-profile political figures also weighed in on social media and cable news, including Trump’s rival in the 2016 general election and a key player in the most recent presidential impeachment process two decades ago.

“Witness intimidation is a crime, no matter who does it. Full stop,” Hillary Clinton wrote on Twitter.

Former independent counsel Ken Starr similarly criticized Trump's attack but said he didn't think it constituted witness intimidation. “Well, I must say that the president was not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet. Extraordinarily poor judgment," he told Fox News.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, also accused Trump of witness intimidation. And he chastised his Republican colleagues for attempting to downplay the gravity of Trump’s tweets.

“Every Member of Congress ought to be standing up to the President’s attacks and witness intimidation,” he wrote on Twitter. “It is wrong and dangerous.”

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said the tweet was simply the president's opinion, "which he is entitled to."

"The tweet was not witness intimidation," she said.

Asked what her reaction was when she read the record of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Yovanovitch testified that she was “shocked, absolutely shocked, and devastated, frankly.”

“I was shocked and devastated that I would feature in a phone call between two heads of state in such a manner, where President Trump said I was ‘bad news’ to another world leader, and that I would ‘be going through some things.’ It was a terrible moment. A person who saw me reading the transcript said the color drained from my face. Even now, words kind of fail me.”

Yovanovitch repeated what she said in her closed-door deposition about feeling threatened by Trump’s comment that she would be “going through some things.”

“I didn’t know what to think but I was very concerned,” Yovanovitch said. “It didn’t sound good. It sounded like a threat. I did [feel threatened].”

Yovanovitch gets candid about her firing

Yovanovitch did not minimize the disappointment she felt about being recalled as ambassador to Ukraine earlier this year, saying her dismissal without cause was “a terrible thing to hear.”

“I mean, after 33 years of service to our country it was terrible. It's not the way I wanted my career to end,” she said of the sudden call she received urging her to get on the next flight out of Ukraine.

She added that at the time, she argued to deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan that her removal, which came after a public smear campaign by Trump allies, would set a dangerous precedent for the department and agreed with the Democratic counsel questioning her that she’d never before heard of an ambassador being recalled based on allegations State knew were false.

When the hearing resumed after a break, Republican Devin Nunes tried to portray Yovanovitch’s testimony as, essentially, irrelevant.

Nunes peppered the diplomat with questions about whether she was involved with the infamous July 25 call between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, the hold on U.S. military aid and other events that post-dated her time in Ukraine.

After she said “no” to his series of questions, Nunes said he didn’t understand why Yovanovitch was testifying in the inquiry. Her early recall from her ambassadorship seemed to be an employment dispute, one better relegated to a “human resources subcommittee,” Nunes said.

No statement of support from Pompeo

Yovanovitch appeared to call out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for not agreeing to issue a statement of support for her after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted in March about removing “joker” ambassadors like her from their positions.

Yovanovitch testified that over the weekend of March 22, after the Trump Jr. tweet, she made it clear to State Department leadership that in light of the comments from the president’s son, “it would be very hard to continue in my position and have authority in Ukraine” if they didn’t publicly support her.

“So over the weekend of March 22, there was a lot of discussion on email among a number of people about what could be done,” she said. “The Under Secretary for Political Affairs [David Hale] called me on Sunday, and I said, ‘it’s very important that the secretary himself come out and be supportive, because otherwise it’s hard for me to be the kind of representative you need here. He said he’d talk to the secretary.”

But Yovanovitch was told later that “there was a concern” by the secretary and his advisers that if a statement was issued “it could be undermined” by Trump. “That the president might issue a tweet contradicting that or something to that effect,” she said.

Diplomats rallying around Yovanovitch

U.S. diplomats are rallying support for Yovanovitch as she testifies in the impeachment hearings and faces a real-time Twitter attack from Trump.

Using hashtags such as #FSProud and #GoMasha, retired and current members of the Foreign Service are showing solidarity with a colleague many believe was unfairly smeared and yanked from her ambassadorship in Ukraine.

“Having worked with so many incredibility talented Foreign Service members, I will forever be #FSProud – of their professionalism, their patriotism, their commitment to service, and critically, of the conviction they bring to the very human endeavor of diplomacy,” tweeted Samantha Power, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration.

Among those pushing the online campaign is the American Foreign Service Association, the diplomats’ union. AFSA is also requesting donations to a legal fund set up for diplomats having to testify in the impeachment hearings.

Putin would try to ‘throw off the scent’ by blaming Ukraine

In their July 25 call, Trump asked Zelensky for a “favor” — to “get to the bottom of” Ukraine’s alleged interference in the 2016 election. Asked whether she was familiar with the allegations that Ukraine interfered in 2016, Yovanovitch testified that while she had heard “rumors,” she had never gotten “hard” evidence to support the claims.

“The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered,” she said.

Daniel Goldman, Intelligence Committee’s director of investigations, then asked whether she was aware that during a joint press conference in February 2017 with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin himself “promoted the theory” of Ukrainian meddling in 2016.

Yovanovitch said she couldn’t recall whether she was aware of it at the time, but said Putin, a former KGB officer, must’ve known about U.S. concerns over Russia’s interference then and in the future—and that it’s “classic for an intelligence officer to try to throw off the scent and create an alternative narrative that might get picked up and get some credence.”

‘The attacks against me are dangerously wrong’

In her opening remarks at Friday’s hearing, Yovanovitch outlined her 33 years of diplomatic experience, emphasized the importance of U.S. support for Ukraine in the face of continued Russian aggression, and asked how it is possible that corrupt Ukrainians “found Americans willing to partner with them and, working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. Ambassador.”

Yovanovitch was recalled from Kyiv early amid a smear campaign waged by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his allies accusing her of disloyalty to the White House and of attempting to interfere in Ukraine’s justice system—accusations Yovanovitch and other witnesses have attributed to her anti-corruption work, which may have stymied certain Trump allies’ business interests.

“The allegation that I disseminated a ‘do not prosecute list’ is a fabrication,” Yovanovitch testified, referring to an accusation leveled against her by former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko.

“I do not understand Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me, nor can I offer an opinion on whether he believed the allegations he spread about me,” she said. “Clearly, no one at the State Department did. What I can say is that Mr. Giuliani should have known those claims were suspect, coming as they reportedly did from individuals with questionable motives and with reason to believe that their political and financial ambitions would be stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”

Warning of the ramifications of her removal, and how “shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American Ambassador who does not give them what they want,” Yovanovitch also dinged the State Department’s leadership, lamenting their unwillingness to state publicly “that the attacks against me are dangerously wrong.” Several State Department witnesses have testified that they pushed for a public statement of support for Yovanovitch after her removal, but that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo never signed off on it.

Recalled in the middle of an anti-corruption event

In a revealing anecdote, Yovanovitch testified that she was recalled from her posting on April 24, three days after Trump’s first call with Zelensky, while in the middle of hosting an event honoring an anti-corruption activist in Ukraine.

“She died because she was attacked by acid and died a painful death,” Yovanovitch said of the anti-corruption activist Kateryna Handziuk, who died in November. “We thought it was important that justice be done, for her and for others who fight corruption in Ukraine. It’s not a tabletop exercise there, lives are in the balance. So we wanted to bring attention to this, and we gave her father that [Woman of Courage] award.”

Around 8 p.m., the director general of the State Department, Carol Perez, called Yovanovitch and told her there may be issues with her remaining in her role. At 1 a.m., Perez called again, Yovanovitch testified, and said “there were great concerns” about her at the White House and that “I needed to come home immediately and get on the next plane.”

GOP lawmakers spar with Schiff

Following opening statements by the top Democrat and Republican on the Intelligence committee — and just before Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff was set to swear in Yovanovitch — a brief procedural scuffle broke out between the panel’s chairman and minority members.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) interjected with a point of order, asking Schiff whether he would “continue to prohibit witnesses from answering Republican questions” and accusing him of blocking GOP lines of inquiry during both closed-door depositions and at the first impeachment hearing Wednesday.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also jumped into the fray, demanding that Schiff make public some deposition transcripts by impeachment witnesses that have not yet been released.

The jousting came to an end when Schiff offered a backhanded show of gratitude to Trump for turning over the readout of an April call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “While we're grateful he has released a single document, he has nonetheless obstructed witnesses and their testimony and the production of thousands and thousands of other records,” he said.

Nunes reads summary of Trump’s first call with Zelensky

Just as the hearing was about to start, the White House released the call memo detailing Trump’s April 21 call with Ukraine’s president-elect at the time, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Devin Nunes took advantage. The ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee read the entire summary aloud as part of his opening statement on Friday.

The call appeared fairly anodyne, at least compared to Trump’s July 25 conversation with Zelensky, in which he repeatedly asked the Ukrainian to investigate one of his political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden.

And that’s probably why Nunes wanted to put it all on the record, to spread the idea that Trump didn’t have ill-intentions in dealing with the Ukrainians.

Schiff seeks to cut down GOP attack lines

In his opening remarks at the outset of Friday’s hearing, Schiff touted the witness’ diplomatic credentials, citing Yovanovitch’s more than three-decade tenure in the Foreign Service and widely respected work combating bureaucratic corruption abroad.

Schiff also sought to rebut two chief arguments Republican members of his panel have employed ahead of Yovanovitch’s testimony: that the president was within his rights to remove her from her post in Kyiv, and that she could not speak to Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for an investigation of the Bidens.

While the chairman acknowledged that U.S. envoys “serve at the pleasure of the president,” he said the question before the committee “is not whether Donald Trump could recall an American ambassador with a stellar reputation for fighting corruption in Ukraine, but why would he want to?”

Schiff also asserted that Yovanovitch’s ouster “helped set [the] stage for an irregular channel that could pursue the two investigations that mattered so much to the president,” adding that the ambassador “was considered an obstacle to the furtherance of the president’s personal and political agenda.”