Trump's ex-Ukraine envoy said she felt 'shocked' and threatened when Trump told Ukraine's president she was 'going to go through some things'
- Marie Yovanovitch, the US's former ambassador to Ukraine, told Congress she was "shocked," "concerned," and threatened by comments President Donald Trump made about her during a July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
- A White House summary of the phone call showed Trump telling Zelensky Yovanovitch was "bad news." The president also cryptically told Zelensky that Yovanovitch is "going to go through some things."
- Yovanovitch said she "didn't know what [Trump] meant" and that she was "very concerned" by the conversation.
- Asked if she felt threatened by Trump's words, Yovanovitch replied, "Yes."
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Marie Yovanovitch, the US's former ambassador to Ukraine, testified to Congress that she felt threatened by comments President Donald Trump made about her during a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to a partial transcript of her testimony in Congress' impeachment inquiry that was released on Monday, Yovanovitch was "shocked" and "concerned" Trump even mentioned her during the phone call.
A White House summary of the phone call showed Trump telling Zelensky Yovanovitch was "bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, so I just want you to know that."
The president also cryptically told Zelensky that Yovanovitch is "going to go through some things."
"What did you understand that to mean?" the transcript of her testimony said. It did not specify which lawmaker asked the question.
"I didn't know what it meant," Yovanovitch replied. "I was very concerned. I still am." Asked if she felt threatened, Yovanovitch said, "Yes."
Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post in Ukraine in May, two months before Trump spoke to Zelensky by phone. She testified that she was removed based on "false claims by people with clearly questionable motives" and after Trump embarked on a smear campaign against her starting in the summer of 2018.
The career diplomat also testified that she believed she was recalled because she refused to go along with Rudy Giuliani's attempts to get the Ukrainians to deliver Trump dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. Giuliani is Trump's longtime personal lawyer and a key figure in the Trump administration's shadow foreign policy campaign against Ukraine.
"I do not know Mr. Giuliani's motives for attacking me," she said. But people associated with Giuliani "may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine."
At the time Yovanovitch was recalled from Ukraine, Giuliani was urging Ukrainian government officials to investigate baseless claims of corruption against Biden and his son.
Yovanovitch was also tough on Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's former prosecutor general, and the divide between her and Giuliani widened when she wouldn't help Giuliani look for dirt on Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 election.
"She refused to allow her embassy to be dragged into some sort of effort to concoct dirt for political purposes," a former official told The Guardian.
In the testimony, Yovanovitch also said she was told by a top State Department official that the president had pushed for her removal even though the State Department believed she had "done nothing wrong."
According to The New York Times, Yovanovitch testified that John Sullivan, the deputy secretary of state, told her earlier this year that "this was not like other situations where he had recalled ambassadors for cause."
Instead, Sullivan reportedly told Yovanovitch that Trump had "lost confidence in me and no longer wished me to serve as his ambassador." She was also said to have testified that there'd 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."