Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a key figure in the impeachment of President Trump, is retiring after three decades in the foreign service.
Yovanovitch, 61, retired months before her current assignment was scheduled to end, NPR reported.
After her ouster from the Ukraine ambassadorship, Yovanovitch had been serving as a senior State Department fellow at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and remained on the State Department payroll.
She rose to prominence during Trump’s impeachment investigation, testifying to the House that her reputation was smeared by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who spread disinformation that she had been blocking corruption investigations into 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of the Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president.
Trump recalled her from Kyiv after Giuliani and a Ukrainian prosecutor accused her of being a political enemy of the White House.
The president denounced the career diplomat in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he urged the new Ukrainian leader to work with Giuliani, who sought to find dirt on the Bidens.
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, said Wednesday that former national security adviser John Bolton told him in September that his committee should investigate Yovanovitch’s ouster.
Yovanovitch had been a foreign service officer for 33 years, serving in four Republican and two Democratic presidential administrations. She was appointed to three ambassadorships in Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and then Ukraine.
