Former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch pushed back on the claims President Trump made about her on social media while she was testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee.
Yovanovitch, a career foreign service officer, appeared in front of the committee on Friday for the second day of public hearings in the impeachment investigation. While she was on the Hill, Trump took a swipe at her on Twitter, arguing that, “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” He also pointed out that administration officials serve at the pleasure of the president.
She was asked about Trump’s tweets by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.
“But would you like to respond to the president’s attack that everywhere you went it turned bad?” Schiff asked after reading the tweets aloud.
“I mean, I — I don’t think I have such powers, not in Mogadishu and Somalia and not in other places,” she countered. “I actually think that where I’ve served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better, you know, for the U.S. as well as for the countries that I’ve served in. Ukraine, for example, where there are huge challenges, including, you know, on the issue that we’re discussing today of corruption, huge challenges, but they have made a lot of progress since 2014, including in the years that I was there. And I think in part, I mean the Ukrainian people get the most credit for that, but a part of that credit goes to the United States and to me as the ambassador in Ukraine.”
Yovanovitch was removed from her position last spring and has pointed the finger at Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani for starting a smear campaign against her. Trump also criticized her in the July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he asked for the foreign leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and Burisma, a Ukrainian company the younger Biden worked for.
