Trump impeachment news: Ambassador gets standing ovation for her testimony after 'intimidation' attempt by president
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Your support makes all the difference.As ex-Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch has testified before the House impeachment inquiry, just after the White House has released its transcript of the first call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, seemingly an attempt to distract from the veteran diplomat's potentially explosive deposition.
Speaking in Louisiana last night, the president complained the inquiry has been “very hard” on his family as he took to the stage to muster support for Republican gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone, the plea for sympathy a marked change of tactic.
As security experts warn Mr Trump’s 26 July phone call with Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the EU, could have been picked up by Russian spies, the president is planning to take the battle to withhold his tax returns from investigators to the Supreme Court.
The Friday testimony proved to be an exciting one, with Mr Trump live tweeting the exchange until being called out directly by Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
In doing so, Mr Schiff was able to check in with Ms Yovanovitch in real time, and hear from her that she believed his comments to be aimed at intimidation.
Many have now said that Mr Trump's attack may amount to witness tampering — which could add to the articles of impeachment facing the president.
Ms Yovanovitch also described publicly a conspiracy led by Rudy Giuliani to get her removed from her post as ambassador — which she said she did not understand the purpose of, since the president could have simply fired her if he wanted.
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Democratic question: "The State Department would not issue a statement in support of you [over false allegations against you] ... because they were concerned about a tweet from the president of the United States?"
"That's my understanding," Ms Yovanovitch says.
Ms Yovanovitch is now getting the opportunity to respond to Donald Trump's attacks on Twitter. On Mr Trump's claims from Mr Trump that bad things followed her :
"Well I, I mean, I don't think I have such powers, not in Mogadishu in Somalia, not in other places, I actually believe where I served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better for the US as well as for the countries that I've served in."
Ukraine for example where there are huge challenges including on the issues we're discussing today, corruption, huge challenges but they've made a lot of progress in 2014, including while I was there... Ukrainian people get most of the credit but, a part of that credit goes to the United States and to me as the ambassador in Ukraine."
Asked how Mr Trump's attacks might be interpreted by her and others in the US State Department:
"I think the effect is to be intimidating."
Wow, Democrats just led Ms Yovanovitch into declaring that she believes that Mr Trump's contemporaneous attacks have the impact of being intimidating.
Democrats say they take witness intimidation seriously.
"It certainly would not have been the policy in May when I left," when asked about Mr Trump's efforts to get an investigation into Burisma and the 2016 election, which she noted earlier was conducted by Russia.
She says "well they certainly could" when asked if the investigations would serve Mr Trump's personal and political interests.
Fox News's Bret Baier thinks Donald Trump just dug himself a grave. This is not good news for Mr Trump, who relies on positive coverage on Fox News:
Mr Schiff, speaking outside of the hearing room, blasts Mr Trump for his tweet.
"We take this kind of witness intimidation and obstruction very seriously," Mr Schiff said of the tweets.
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