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.
....They call it “serving at the pleasure of the President.” The U.S. now has a very strong and powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is called, quite simply, America First! With all of that, however, I have done FAR more for Ukraine than O.
7:01 AM - 15 Nov 2019While she was testifying! It didn't take any time at all for Adam Schiff to call it witness tampering.
The only viable analysis of it is pretty self-evident:
Bret Baier: "That was a turning point in this hearing so far. She was already a sympathetic witness & the President’s tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation -adding an article of impeachment real-time."
Former independent counsel Ken Starr criticizes Trump's tweets attacking Yovanovitch: "I must say that the president was not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet. Extraordinarily poor judgment ... obviously I think this was quite injurious."
Meanwhile, Yovanovitch - under oath, mind you - was spilling some red-hot beans:
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified Friday during the House’s second day of public impeachment hearings that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani worked with corrupt Ukrainians to carry out her removal.Yovanovitch testified that “it was and remains a top U.S. priority” to root out corruption in Ukraine, and said that “significant progress has been made.” But she alleges that “Ukrainians who sought to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me.”“What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them and working together, they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. ambassador,” Yovanovitch said. “How could our system fail like this? How is it that foreign, corrupt interests could manipulate our government? Which country’s interests are served when the very corrupt we’ve been criticizing is allowed to prevail?”Last month, during her closed-door testimony, Yovanovitch testified that she learned that Giuliani, in cooperation with two Florida businessmen with Ukrainian connections, went behind her back to attempt to replace her with someone more favorably inclined towards their “business dealings in Ukraine.”
Yovanovitch stated that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were arrested in October for campaign-finance violations and subsequently subpoenaed by the House, were interested in exporting liquid natural gas to Ukraine, a move the embassy normally supports.
“I didn’t understand that because nobody at the embassy had ever met those two individuals,” she continued. “And, you know, one of the biggest jobs of an American ambassador of the U.S. Embassy is to promote U.S. business. So, of course, if legitimate business comes to us, you know, that’s what we do, we promote U.S. business.”And the Giuliani bunch had some plans for what came after Yovanovitch:
Spin this, leg-humpers.At the same time that Rudy Giuliani and his now-indicted pals were pushing for President Donald Trump to remove Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Ukraine, Trump administration officials were eyeing potential contenders to take over her job.
One of the people in the mix, according to three sources familiar with the discussions, was Pete Sessions, a former congressman who called for Yovanovitch’s firing. He is also a longtime ally of the former New York Mayor, and is believed to have been the “beneficiary of approximately $3 million in independent expenditures” from a PAC funded in part by Giuliani’s indicted cronies, according to a federal indictment.
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