The U.S. House Intelligence Committee holds its second day of public hearings in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry on Nov. 15. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch will testify. The hearing begins at 9 a.m. EST in Washington, DC.
Read the transcript of Yovanovitch’s Nov. 15 prepared statement here.
During the first day of public hearings on Nov. 13, Ambassador William Taylor, U.S. charge d’affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, testified. Read our coverage of the first day of hearings.
Yovanovitch has already testified in the impeachment inquiry behind closed doors. Read the transcript of her testimony from Oct. 11.
Taylor and Kent also testified in the closed impeachment inquiry hearings.
Read the transcript of Kent’s testimony from Oct. 15 and its analysis.
Read the transcript of Taylor’s testimony from Oct. 22.
Highlights:
- Yovanovitch agrees with the assessment and description of ex-prosecutors general of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko and Viktor Shokin, as corrupt;
- She describes attempts by President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to seek the overturning of a U.S. visa refusal to Shokin;
- Under questioning from House Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman, she describes how she was urgently recalled in late April and told to return to the United States from Kyiv “on the next flight” because of concerns for her safety.
- Just a month earlier, in March, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Sullivan asked her to extend her stay in Kyiv into 2020.
- “It was a terrible thing to hear” that Trump had lost confidence in her, although she was given no reason why, Yovanovitch said;
- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told her he could no longer protect her from Trump or the forces seeking her removal from Ukraine;
- She said “it kind of felt like a vague threat” when Trump on July 25 told Zelensky said that Yovanovitch will be “going through some things.”
- She disagreed with Trump’s description of Lutsenko as a “very good, very fair” prosecutor, Yovanovitch countered that the U.S. assessment was that Lutsenko was corrupt; “we were very hopeful” when Lutsenko came to office in 2016 that he would reform a corrupt office, but he never did, she said, and nobody from the U.S. government would describe him in such favorable terms;
- As she was testifying on live television, Trump tweeted more derogatory remarks about Yovanovitch. Trump tweeted: “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(bama).” And: “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.”
- She said that she never badmouthed Trump or created a “do not prosecute” list of people for Lutsenko, allegations that the ex-prosecutor admitted later were not true.
- Responding to Schiff’s request for her to respond to Trump’s allegation that everywhere she went, things turned bad, she said the opposite was true — she made things “demonstrably better” in countries where she served, but said everything is not up to her.
- Asking the effect of Trump’s live-tweet criticism, Yovanovitch replied that “it is very intimidating.” Schiff said “some of us here take witness intimidation very seriously.”
- Yovanovitch said the U.S. relationship is the single most important relationship that Ukraine has, and that Ukrainian leaders would try to respond favorably to Trump’s request to Zelensky for investigations into Democratic rival Joseph Biden and rumors of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
- Yovanovitch said she heard only rumors that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election when, actually, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia had done so.
- Trump said in 2017 that Ukrainian government had taken the universal position to support Clinton. Yovanovitch said that Rusian President Vladimir Putin was pushing the false narrative that Ukraine interfered to deflect attention from the Kremlin’s interference.
- Regarding whether Joseph Biden stopped prosecutors from investigating corruption allegations involving Burisma, where his son Hunter Biden served on the board of directors for the lucrative salary of $50,000 monthly, Yovanovitch said that such an allegation is untrue. She said that Biden was articulating the policy of the United States and its Western allies in seeking the firing of ex-prosecutor Shokin in 2016 by ex-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
- Trump, instead, endorsed fake allegations and smear campaign against Yovanovitch and Biden, she said.
- The committee — which started the hearing shortly after 9 a.m. — takes a recess at 10:38 a.m. Washington D.C. time, 5:48 p.m. Kyiv time.
- Break ents at 7:45 p.m. Kyiv time.
- Yovanovitch, under questioning, agrees that corruption is endemic in Ukraine and part of the problem is that so much wealth is concentrated by a handful of oligarchs who control media and much of the economy.
- Says initially, U.S. welcomed the Lutsenko appointment as the general prosecutor in 2016 after Shokin was fired, but soon realized he would not bring the changes that Ukrainians need to clean up. Law enforcement in the former Soviet Union is a tool against political adversaries, she said.
- Burisma case, by the time she got to Ukraine in 2016, the case was neither closed or open — a perfect way for prosecutors to “keep a hook” in suspects as a way to get bribes.
- Regarding ex-Ukraine Ambassador to the United States Valeriy Chaliy’s Aug. 4, 2016, op-ed in The Hill, in which he criticized Trump’s suggestion that he might recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Yovanovitch called the issue a sensitive one for Ukrainians. She said Chaly’s criticism of Trump, along with that of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and other Ukrainians, didn’t suggest a concerted campaign to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.
- Yovanovitch said Lutsenko didn’t meet his three stated goals: reforming prosecutor’s office, which had wide powers of investigation and prosecution; “some of the people in those jobs were considered to be corrupt themselves”; “nobody has been held accountable” for more than 100 murders by riot police during the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014; and “none of that money — maybe $1 billion” out of $40 billion allegedly stolen by Yanukovych and his allies has been returned.
- Yovanovitch said she knew of no bribes or criminal activity by Trump, despite the smear campaign orchestrated against her by ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney.
- A Republican member of the committee, Michael Ray Turner of Ohio, asked for a Kyiv Post article to be entered into the record, among other news coverage. He described it as an article about the planned visit to Kyiv in 2004 by ex-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who died in 2010, to visit Kyiv for a private visit with billionaire oligarch Victor Pinchuk. If so, the article headlined “Holbrooke to visit Kyiv” was published on July 8, 2004, and written by staff writer Roman Olearchyk.
- Democrat Eric Michael Swalwell of California puts on a screen the “disgusting tweet” Trump issued to denigrate Yovanovitch as she was testifying. “He smeared you when you were in Ukraine, he smeared you on the July 25 phone call with Zelensky and he smears you right now as you are testifying.” She told Swalwell that she “will continue with my work,” despite presidential smears and that she will continue to fight corruption if her country asks her to do so.
- After lavishly praising Yovanovitch, Republican Will Hurd of Texas ran through the last “5 years of Ukraine’s history” in his five minutes, but the point of his questioning was convoluted.
- Yovanovitch agreed with the suggestion of Democrat Joaquin Castro of Texas that, in a corrupt country like Ukraine, Trump’s request for an investigation of the Bidens could lead to “trumped-up” charges.
- Democrat Denny Heck of Washington State says the facts are clear: She was smeared by Giuliani with the help of a corrupt former prosecutor, Lustenko. “I’m very angry how it is that the most powerful person on the face of the earth would you remove you from office after your stellar service…and ominously threaten that ‘you’re going to go through some things.’ I am angry, but I am not surprised.”
- Yovanovitch to Heck: “Ukraine, like many countries, looks to us for the power of our example. When we engage in questionable activities, that raises a question. It emboldens those who are corrupt and don’t want to see Ukraine become a democracy, free-market economy and part of Europe and want Ukraine to stay in Russia’s s thrall and that is not in our national interest.”
- Trump wasn’t the only one insulting Yovanovitch on social media as she testified. Lutsenko wrote a post on Facebook: “She lies. And I have proof.
- The House impeachment inquiry into Trump took a break at 9:30 p.m. Kyiv time/2:30 p.m. Washington, D.C., time.
- Resuming at 9:50 p.m. Kyiv time/2:50 p.m. Washington, D.C., time, Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio, asked Yovanovitch why she didn’t raise any concerns with ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, ex-member of parliament Sergii Leshchenko, and ex-Ukraine Ambassador to Ukraine Valeriy Chaliy criticized candidate Trump in 2016. “No one did anything. Do you see why maybe, Trump, was concerned…we add to that the corruption level in Ukraine and he’s not a big fan of foreign aid?” Yovanovitch said that those criticisms don’t create a Ukrainian government strategy to interfere in U.S. elections.
- Democrats Peter Welch of Vermont and Sean Patrick Maloney of New York then took up the questioning, with Maloney asking about her last day on April 24, 2019, giving a “Women of Courage” award to family members of anti-corruption activist Kateryna Handziuk of Kherson, fatally attacked with acid in July 2018, dying four months later in November 2018. Yovanovitch said the purpose of Handziuk’s killers: “The message was: This could happen to you, too, if you can continue to do this work.”
- Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois noted the Wall Street Journal story that Guiliani is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan into whether he profited from attempts by his clients, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to set up a liquified natural gas plant in Ukraine.
- The public part of the impeachment inquiry closed about 10:20 p.m. Kyiv time/3:20 p.m. Washington, D.C. time. Schiff, the Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, says that he is “profoundly grateful” to her, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor for showing “the face of our diplomatic corps, extraordinary public servants…” “Your efforts often prevent us from going to war. What you are holds our country together, holds our foreign policy together and I’m glad America gets to see that.” Schiff said that just because Trump “failed in this solicitation of bribery,” in trying to get Zelensky to dig up dirt on his rivals, “doesn’t make it any less moral or less corrupt.”
- Schiff said that Yovanovitch was viewed as an “obstacle who had to go” because she interfered in Trump’s corrupt schemes. “He praises the corrupt, condemns the just, and asks for an investigation into the Bidens.” Republicans tried to counter what one called “disparaging remarks,” but Schiff gaveled the public meeting to a close.
