WASHINGTON (AP) — It started with a warning to watch her back, that people were “looking to hurt” her. It escalated into a chilling campaign to fire her as President Donald Trump and his allies angled in Eastern Europe for political advantage at home, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told House investigators.
Testimony from Yovanovitch, released Monday, offered a first word-for-word look at the closed-door House impeachment hearings. Inside, Democrats and Republicans are waging a pitched battle over what to make of Trump's efforts to get Ukraine's leaders to investigate political rival Joe Biden, Biden's son and Democratic activities in the 2016 election.
The transcript came out on the same day that four Trump administration officials defied subpoenas to testify, acting on orders from a White House that is fighting the impeachment investigation with all its might. Among those refusing to testify: John Eisenberg, the lead lawyer at the National Security Council and, by some accounts, the man who ordered a rough transcript of Trump's phone call with Ukraine's leader moved to a highly restricted computer system.
During nine hours of sometimes emotional testimony, Yovanovitch detailed efforts led by Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies to push her out of her post. The career diplomat, who was recalled from her job in May on Trump's orders, testified that a senior Ukrainian official told her that "I really needed to watch my back."
While the major thrust of Yovanovitch's testimony was revealed in her opening statement, Monday's 317-page transcript provided new details.
Yovanovitch offered significant threads of information including the possibility that Trump was directly involved in a phone call with Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, and the Ukrainians dating back to January 2018. And she pushed back on Republican suggestions that she harbored opposition to Trump.
She had been recalled from Kiev before the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that's at the center of the impeachment inquiry. Later, she was "surprised and dismayed" by what she saw in the transcript of the call — including that Trump had called her "bad news." He also said that "she's going to go through some things."
"I was shocked," Yovanovitch said, to see "that the president would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart."
Asked about her as he left on a campaign trip Monday, Trump had a more equivocal comment: "I'm sure she's a very fine woman. I just don't know much about her."
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said transcripts from the hearings are being released so "the American public will begin to see for themselves." Two were released Monday, and more are coming.
Republicans have accused Democrats of conducting a one-sided process behind closed doors.
But the transcripts show Republican lawmakers were given time for questioning, which they used to poke at different aspects of the impeachment inquiry. Some Republicans criticized the process as unfair, while others tried to redirect witnesses to their own questions about Biden's work on Ukraine corruption issues while he was vice president.
In public, some Republicans say the president's actions toward Ukraine, though not ideal, are not impeachable.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Oversight committee, defended Yovanovitch's ouster as clearly within the president's prerogative.