The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Exenvoy testifies
Kentraised Marie Yovanovitch tells Congress Trump pressured State Department to remove her from her diplomatic post in Ukraine
WASHINGTON — Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified to Congress Friday that a senior State Department official informed her that President Donald Trump advocated for her removal from office for months before her abrupt recall from the country last spring.
The decision to pull her from Ukraine was based “on false claims by people with clearly questionable motives,” Yovanovitch told the House Intelligence Committee in her opening statement, obtained by the New York Times.
In a further signal of the White House’s fight against impeachment, Yovanovitch was ordered by the State Department, at the direction of the White House, not to attend her highly anticipated deposition Friday, according to a statement by the Democratic chairman of three House committees leading the inquiry.
“In response, the House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to compel her testimony this morning,” the chairmen said Friday.
Yovanovitch, who was raised in Kent, Conn., was the second person named in the whistleblower complaint that sparked Democrats’ impeachment inquiry to testify before Congress.
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D4th District, who sits on the committee, could not publicly discuss the substance of Yovanovitch’s testimony but said it bolstered the case for impeachment in his mind.
“I am more convinced than ever of two things: number one that Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, was running the Ukraine file for the president,” Himes said Friday evening. “Some combination of Giuliani and his people — including the two who were indicted — had a lot to do with her dismissal.”
Giuliani, who is at the center of the Trump team’s efforts to get information from Ukraine, has been a vocal critic of Yovanovitch. Two Ukrainian businessmen who assisted Giuliani with this mission, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested on federal
campaign finance charges Thursday. The duo was also subpoenaed by House Democrats.
“I do not know Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me,” said Yovanovitch, who is still a State Department employee. “But individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anticorruption policy in Ukraine.”
House Democrats are investigating whether Trump, his administration and Giuliani pressured Ukraine to investigate one of Trump’s 2020 rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter. Democrats want to know whether U.S. military aid was withheld from Ukraine in exchange for information on Biden and if the Trump administration tried to cover up these efforts.
Trump team alleges that Joe Biden thwarted Ukraine’s efforts to probe energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden served on the board. A former Ukrainian top prosecutor alleged that Yovanovitch drew up a “do not prosecute list” for Ukraine. Yovanovitch said Friday that was untrue.
“I have never myself or through others, directly or indirectly, ever directed, suggested, or in any other way asked for any government or government official in Ukraine (or elsewhere) to refrain from investigating or prosecuting actual corruption,” she said.
Yovanovitch said she never met Hunter Biden, nor discussed him or Burisma with Joe Biden.
Yovanovitch served as ambassador to Ukraine from August 2016 to May 2019, when she was ordered to get on the next plane home.
Trump said Friday Yovanovitch was a nice woman, but the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy didn’t like her. Zelenskiy took office on the same day as Yovanovitch’s dismissal, casting doubt on the idea that the two would have had professional contact.
Yovanovitch discussed her removal from the country with Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, she said.
“The president had lost confidence in me and no longer wished me to serve as his ambassador,” Yovanovitch testified. “(Sullivan) added that there had been a concerted campaign against me, and that the department had been under pressure from the president to remove me since the summer of 2018. He also said that I had done nothing wrong and that this was not like other situations where he had recalled ambassadors for cause.”
Yovanovitch worked for the State Department for more than 30 years prior to these recent controversies. She previously served as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.
“Today, we see the State Department attacked and hollowed out from within,” Yovanovitch testified. “State Department leadership, with Congress, needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees. We need to rebuild diplomacy as the first resort to advance America’s interests and the front line of America’s defense.”
Earlier this week, the State Department blocked another official from testifying to the committee. But U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland bucked the department Friday, announcing he would appear before the House committee under subpoena next week. He is among numerous witnesses from whom the House is now seeking documents and testimony, including Giuliani.
Yovanovitch was born in Canada to Ukrainian parents and then moved to Kent at age 3. Her parents, Nadia and Michel, taught foreign languages at Kent School for roughly 30 years, until they retired in 1993. Marie, also known by the Russian nickname Masha, Yovanovitch, graduated from the private boarding school in 1976, Kent’s school magazine indicates.