This archive report was first published on 15 November 2019.
On November 15, 2019, President Trump's Twitter post denigrated Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine, as she testified in the impeachment inquiry about how she felt threatened by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, 'Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?' He added that 'It is a U.S. President's absolute right to appoint ambassadors.'
Ms. Yovanovitch told the House Intelligence Committee in powerful and personal terms of the devastation and fear she felt earlier this year, as she was targeted first by Mr. Trump's allies and later by the president himself during a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
Democrats said Mr. Trump's onslaught amounted to an attempt to threaten Ms. Yovanovitch and other potential witnesses for cooperating in the inquiry, a tactic that they said could itself be impeachable.
Ms. Yovanovitch said she was bereft when she came under fire last spring from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, and his eldest son, but even more stunned in September when she learned that Mr. Trump himself had told another foreign leader that she was 'bad news' in his now-famous July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president.
Ms. Yovanovitch described her reaction to seeing the transcript of the call, saying, 'I couldn't believe it. Shocked, appalled, devastated that the president of the United States would talk about any ambassador like that to a head of state. And it was me. I couldn't believe it.'
Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, interrupted Ms. Yovanovitch to read the president's tweet and ask her what she thought of it.
Ms. Yovanovitch replied, 'It's very intimidating. I can't speak to what the president is trying to do, but the effect is to be intimidating.'
Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that Mr. Trump's attacks on Ms. Yovanovitch amounted to 'clear witness tampering' that could be used by Democrats in an article of impeachment.
