Ex-Ukraine ambassador felt threatened by Trump

Source: Politico | November 4, 2019 | Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney

Depositions from Marie Yovanovitch and Michael McKinley were the first closed-door transcripts to be released by investigators.

The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine described to House impeachment investigators a diplomatic corps under siege by President Donald Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, saying she felt threatened by Trump’s posture toward her, according to a transcript of her testimony released Monday.

Marie Yovanovitch said individuals whose goals and interests were not in line with those of the United States — and were instead motivated by politics — tried to smear her and orchestrated her removal as ambassador to Kyiv. Yovanovitch said she felt personally threatened by Trump’s suggestion to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a July 25 phone call that she was “going to go through some things.”

“I was shocked. I mean, I was very surprised that President Trump would — first of all, that I would feature repeatedly in a presidential phone call, but secondly, that the president would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart,” Yovanovitch, who was recalled as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in May, told investigators.

Yovanovitch said she did not know what Trump meant, adding: “I was very concerned. I still am.”

She said she told Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan that it was a “dangerous precedent” that “private interests and people who don’t like a particular American ambassador could combine to, you know, find somebody who was more suitable for their interests.”

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Transcripts of Yovanovitch’s and McKinley’s interviews with impeachment investigators were released Monday, the first such documents made public by lawmakers leading the probe, which centers on Trump’s efforts to pressure Zelensky to investigate his political opponents.

Asked about the transcript on Monday, Trump sought to downplay the offensive he led against Yovanovitch even as he took another shot at her.

“I really don’t know her,” Trump told reporters, adding, “The president of the Ukraine was not a fan of hers either.”

Yovanovitch and McKinley both described a deepening concern that U.S. foreign policy had been negatively impacted by individuals such as Giuliani who were seeking to boost Trump’s domestic political standing.

“I was disturbed by the implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative information on political opponents,” McKinley, who resigned in part because the State Department wouldn’t issue a statement of support for Yovanovitch, told investigators.

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