The House Intelligence Committee publicly released on Monday the full transcript of testimony from State Department employee Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine who was recalled from her post by Donald Trump after a smear campaign was waged against her. The Intelligence panel also released testimony from former State Department official Michael McKinley, who recently stepped down as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's chief deputy. Both are career diplomats.
Yovanovitch told congressional investigators that she felt personally at risk after a rough transcript of Trump's July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was released in which Trump called her "a bad ambassador" and said she would "go through some things."
Q: At the bottom of that same page, President Trump says, "Well, she's going to go through some things. " What did you understand that to mean?
A: I didn't know what it meant. I was very concerned. I still am.
Q: Did you feel threatened?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you feel that you might be retaliated against?
A: You know, there's a universe of what it could mean. I don't know.
Just imagine working on behalf of your country to advance U.S. interests abroad and finding out that your very own president was not only trashing you in a private phone call with another foreign leader but also threatening you. In fact, Yovanovitch said she was "very surprised" that she would have been a topic of conversation at all, not to mention the fact that "the President would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart.”
McKinley testified that he tried to defend Yovanovitch against the smear campaign driven by Rudy Giuliani and even brought it up directly with Pompeo, who ultimately provided no support to the ambassador.
A: I said [to Pompeo]: We've seen the situation that's developing outside. Wouldn't it be good to put out a statement on Yovanovitch? Since my impression is the Department, you know, at least tried to keep her in Ukraine.
Q: What was his response?
A: He listened. That was it. Sort of , "Thank you." That was the limit of the conversation.
A: Did you get the sense that he agreed that the Department was supportive or . . .
A: I did not. I did not.
When McKinley first reached out to Yovanovitch to discuss the situation, he testified that she said "no one had reached out to her from senior levels of the Department, and that she had retained private counsel."
The bigger picture that emerges from the transcripts is one of both an ambassador and other State Department officials discovering the Giuliani-led smear campaign and struggling to squelch it but simply not having enough support from the upper echelons of the Trump administration, including Pompeo and Trump himself.
Transcripts of testimony from both Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland and special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker are expected to be released Tuesday.