Perhaps fortuitously or perhaps by design, the House of Representatives scheduled votes on Friday morning that were timed perfectly to allow the Democrats to question former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and then make the Republicans wait to offer their counter-examination. This added power to Ms. Yovanovitch’s testimony as the initial news coverage wasn’t balanced by right-wing talking points or rebuttals. It seems that Nancy Pelosi is a master conductor.
The single most riveting moment of the morning was the discussion of Donald Trump’s July 25 call with President Zelensky in which he said that Ms. Yovanovitch was a bad person who was surrounded by bad people and that some presumably bad “things” were going to happen to her.
Trump in the call suggested the ambassador was bad at her job and said, “Well, she’s going to go through some things.”
“I didn’t know what to think, but I was very concerned,” Yovanovitch said.
“What were you concerned about?” asked a Democratic attorney.
“It didn’t sound good. It sounded like a threat,” she said.
“Did you feel threatened?” asked the attorney.
“I did,” she said, later adding: “It felt like a vague threat, so I wondered what that meant. … It concerned me.”
But Trump did himself no good by making the decision to trash Yovanovitch on Twitter even as she was testifying.
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 U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
This wasn’t received well even on Fox News:
In fact, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff paused the hearing to read Ms. Yovanovitch the content of this tweet and get her reaction.
Yovanovitch listened, her face stoic, as Schiff read the president’s words blaming her for things going badly in places where she served.
“Well I, I don’t think I have such powers,” she said. “I actually think where I’ve served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better for the U.S. and the countries I served in.”
Yovanovitch said when the president tweets about her, it’s “very intimidating.”
Schiff responded, “It’s designed to intimidate.”
“I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating,” she said.
“Some of us here take witness intimidation very seriously,” Schiff said.
The result was that Trump effectively interjected himself as a witness for the prosecution, although the House proceeding is technically still in the investigatory phase. As Chairman Schiff noted, the tweet could arguably be considered witness tampering or intimidation and form the basis for another article of impeachment. This is why Kenneth Starr, the prosector who went after Bill Clinton for Whitewater only to settle for a packet of smut about furtive trysts with an intern, told Fox News viewers that Trump had made a very bad mistake.
Even if none of this had happened on Friday morning, Yovanovitch’s testimony would have served as a powerful rationale for removing the president.
Chris Wallace, on Fox: "If you are not moved by the testimony of Marie Yavonovich, you don't have a pulse."
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) November 15, 2019
The circumstances of her removal, the smearing of her good name, the president’s private assessment of her in a call with the Ukrainian president, and the precedent it set for other foreign service officers were all discussed in way that demanded strong disapproval of Trump’s actions.
It was not a good morning for the president or his supporters.
Well, why not tweet witness intimidation? It’s a great help to the WH knowing that National Trumpalist Repubs will throw up a “defense” to anything and everything.
We’ll be hearing ad nauseum this weekend that “US prez has absolute right to appoint ambassadors!”, a line Der Trumper has been told to memorize. This puts us back to the days of KKK Rover’s purge of US attorneys under Bushco. One may fire such appointees for any legitimate reason or no reason, but not for an improper reason—such as their not being willing to abuse the position or break the law. And certainly not so the abusive prez can have an easier time advancing corruption in the host country or to obtain foreign interference to aid his re-“election”!
Otherwise we are basically back to a prez with the “divine right” powers of a monarch. In any event, Dems must be ready to counter the “absolute right to fire!” talking point, as that’s gonna be the main defense to firing this career diplomat.
Kinda shat himself in the foot there, didn’t he? Who’s his lawyer?
Oh, yeah, Rudy.
Abuse of power with a touch of witness intimidation on the offing today. And they want to tell us Adam Schiff is abusing his power. Really?
The question is easy really. And Chris Mathews just asked it. Whose side are you on the United States or Russia and who is your leader?
JoshTPM makes a good point in the Trump cant understand any of the state department lifers. They are dedicated to a job that wont make them rich and unless something goes badly wrong, will never make them famous. The idea that someone would willingly spend their life like that is incomprehensible to him.