Former independent counsel Ken Starr said that President Trump’s tweets attacking former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch while she testified was a bad decision.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff characterized the tweets, which blasted Yovanovitch’s service to the country, as “witness intimidation.” The California Democrat read the tweets to Yovanovitch in real-time during Thursday’s impeachment hearing.
Appearing on Fox News after a break in the hearing, Starr said it was clear that Trump was not heeding the advice of counsel.
“Well, I must say that the president was not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet — extraordinarily poor judgment,” Starr said. “The president frequently says, ‘I follow my instincts.’ Sometimes we have to control our instincts.”
“So, obviously, this was I think quite injurious,” he added.
Starr said he doesn’t agree with Schiff that it rises to the level of witness intimidation but noted that he thinks that is the way that the tweets will be characterized.
He also said the break right after news of the tweet was “very timely” because he said Yovanovitch did “extremely well, and then the president exacerbated the situation by his unwise intervention.”
Trump’s Thursday tweets ripped into Yovanovitch’s career.
“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,” Trump said.
“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,” he added.
….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.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
During the hearing, Democrats read a transcript of the July 25 call transcript where Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Yovanovitch wasn’t a good ambassador and that she “was going to go through some things.”
The former ambassador testified that after reading the transcript of the call in September, she felt threatened.
“It didn’t sound good — it sounded like a threat,” she told the committee.
