The U.S. House of Representatives is holding open hearings in its impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was the sole witness Friday.
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch warned Congress on Friday that the precedent of her recall from Ukraine this year weakens Washington's ability to work with developing nations around the world.
Yovanovitch told the House Intelligence Committee in its second impeachment hearing that the U.S. has set an example for developing countries seeking to build institutions and fight corruption — but her ouster showed that enemies in Ukraine could exploit American officials to get rid of someone they disliked.
"How could our system fail like this? How is it that a foreign corrupt interests could manipulate our government?" she asked.
Yovanovitch acknowledged that President Trump has the power to appoint and remove diplomats as he pleases, but she argued that if an American representative is "kneecapped" for political reasons, it weakens U.S. power.
"Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want," Yovanovitch said.
Yovanovitch lost her post after a campaign led by Giuliani and associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, witnesses have told House investigators.
Those three worked with Ukraine's then-prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko to spread what Yovanovitch called lies about her, including that she was disloyal to Trump and that she had given Lutsenko a list of Ukrainians she didn't want prosecuted.
That wasn't so, Yovanovitch says, and she told investigators she suspected they spread those stories because they "were interested in having a different ambassador at post — I guess because they wanted to have business dealings in Ukraine, or different business dealings."
Parnas and Fruman have been arrested and charged with violating U.S. campaign finance law; they have pleaded not guilty. An attorney for Parnas has told NPR he's open to working with congressional impeachment investigators, but the outlines of that aren't clear.
Yovanovitch had already talked with investigators; read her closed-door deposition here. Her opening statement from Friday is available here.
