Impeachapalooza

A blog about the impeachment of Donald Trump

  • Trump Campaign Attacks Another Impeachment Witness as He Testifies

    November 19, 2019

    Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, is sworn in before testifying in the House impeachment inquiry. Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly via Zuma

    President Donald Trump’s campaign attacked Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman as he testified during Tuesday morning’s impeachment hearing. Using one of its Twitter accounts as the hearing unfolded, the campaign sought to undermine Vindman’s integrity and paint him as part of a deep-state coup leaking information to overthrow the president—a strategy echoed by Republicans across Washington in the lead-up to Vindman’s testimony.

    Vindman is a Purple Heart recipient who serves as the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council. But ever since Vindman testified behind closed doors last month, Trump and his allies have sought to discredit him as someone disloyal to the president. Trump called Vindman a “Never Trumper witness.” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham described him as “working inside the White House, apparently against the president’s interests.” John Yoo, a former Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, even suggested without evidence that Vindman had committed “espionage.”

    Those attacks were ramped up again on the eve of Vindman’s public testimony. “A significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch have never accepted President Trump as legitimate and resent his unorthodox style and his intrusion onto their ‘turf,’” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote Monday in a letter to House Republicans. “They react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office. It is entirely possible that Vindman fits this profile.”

    The Republican counsel for the House Intelligence Committee, Steve Castor, also used his time at Tuesday’s hearing to raise questions about Vindman’s loyalty. Vindman’s father brought his family to the US from the Soviet Union as refugees nearly 40 years ago, a fact that Vindman raised in his opening statement. But Castor raised an incident in which a Ukrainian official offered Vindman the job of defense minister in Ukraine. Vindman laughed it off as an absurd offer and possibly a joke, and he made clear that he turned it down. 

    The attacks on Vindman have created worries about his security. 

    This isn’t the first time a witness in the impeachment inquiry has been smeared in real time. On Friday, Trump himself used Twitter to attack former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch while she testified. But the attacks on Vindman appear to be part of a more coordinated strategy to discredit a key witness. 

  • More Intimidation: Nunes Baselessly Claims Whistleblower May Have Broken the Law

    November 19, 2019

    Devin Nunes

    Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA

    Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, kicked off Tuesday’s impeachment hearing with a fusillade of attacks on Democrats, the media, and the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint brought the Ukraine scandal into public view. In perhaps the most consequential portion of his opening statement, Nunes went so far as to echo President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the whistleblower may have violated the law. “What are the sources of the whistleblower’s information?” Nunes demanded. “Who else did he talk to? And was the whistleblower prohibited by law from receiving or conveying any of that information?”

    Neither Nunes nor Trump has provided any credible evidence that the whistleblower broke the law. In September, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire told Congress, “I think the whistleblower did the right thing. I think he followed the law every step of the way.”

    Nunes is one of the president’s most loyal defenders, and it’s hard to read his language as anything other than a thinly veiled threat to have the whistleblower prosecuted. Just a week ago, Trump tweeted that the whistleblower “should be investigated for fraud!”

    As I noted at the time, this may be more than an empty threat:

    Time and again, the president has shown a willingness to push the Justice Department and the FBI—and even foreign governments—to investigate and prosecute those he sees as political enemies…There’s ample evidence that Trump sees the DOJ as his personal law firm and the attorney general as his private attorney. Don McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, testified that in 2017, Trump said words to the effect of, “You’re telling me that Bobby and Jack didn’t talk about investigations? Or Obama didn’t tell Eric Holder who to investigate?” (Bobby Kennedy was JFK’s attorney general; Holder was Obama’s.) Indeed, one of the most chilling parts of the rough transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is Trump’s request that Zelensky discuss the Biden allegations not just with Rudy Giuliani, but also with Attorney General Bill Barr—an indication, perhaps, that Trump hoped to use the US justice system to prosecute the Democratic frontrunner.

    In addition, Trump has spent much of the past several years publicly calling for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton. According to the Mueller Report, Trump in 2017 conveyed those desires directly to his then-attorney general, Jeff Sessions, mentioning Clinton’s emails as one of the topics he thought the DOJ should be investigating.

    […]

    Trump has also demanded that law enforcement officials involved in the Russia probe be investigated, even threatening former FBI Director James Comey with jail time. That probe, too, is moving forward; it recently grew into a criminal investigation, though it’s unclear who federal prosecutors are targeting. According to the [New York] Times, it is being “closely overseen” by Barr.

    Nunes and the other Republicans on the committee have been loudly demanding that the whistleblower testify—a move that would, of course, reveal the whistleblower’s identity. Given that Republicans are also alleging that the whistleblower may have committed crimes, it’s not surprising that Democrats are reluctant to comply.

  • In Opening Statement, Vindman Outlines Concerns About Trump’s Ukraine Call

    November 19, 2019

    Alex Brandon/AP

    During his opening statement at Tuesday’s impeachment hearing, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the Ukraine expert on the National Security Council who listened in on President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, explained why he felt compelled to report the call to the NSC legal advisor.  

    “I was concerned by the call. What I heard was improper,” the 20-year Army veteran said. “It is improper for the President of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a US citizen and political opponent. It was also clear that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma, it would be interpreted as a partisan play.”

    “This would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing bipartisan support, undermine US national security, and advance Russia’s strategic objectives in the region,” he continued.

    Vindman concluded by reflecting on his father’s decision to bring his family to the United States as refugees from the Soviet Union 40 years ago. He commented that speaking out against the government would not have been tolerated in countries less committed to free speech.

    “Dad, my sitting here today, in the US Capitol, talking to our elected officials, is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family,” he said. “Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.”

    Read Vindman’s opening statement below:

  • Trump Turns on Pompeo After a Week of Damning Testimony

    November 18, 2019

    Alex Edelman/ZUMA

    President Donald Trump—a man with an unparalleled penchant for turning on members of his inner circle—is now taking aim at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to NBC News. Trump reportedly blames Pompeo, long seen as one of his most loyal cabinet members, for the damning testimony delivered by a parade of State Department officials during the impeachment inquiry.

    “He feels like he’s getting a bunch of blame from the president and the White House for having hired all these people who are turning against Trump,” an official familiar with the dynamic said of Pompeo, “and that it’s the State Department that is going to bring him down, so it’s all Pompeo’s fault.”

    […]

    Another person familiar with the meeting said Pompeo continues to be “iced out” by the president, a shift that often entails still being included in his meetings but listened to less.

    “Pompeo feels under siege,” this person said.

    This isn’t the first time the president has hinted at an emerging fracture. After Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine testified behind closed doors last month, Trump implied that Pompeo had made a mistake in hiring Taylor for the post. Still, he insisted to reporters, “Mike Pompeo, everybody makes mistakes”.

    That’s a relatively forgiving remark compared to today’s report that Pompeo is walking around the White House with a target on his back. Trump’s anger at Pompeo likely boiled over with last week’s first set of public impeachment hearings, where three State officials—Taylor, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine—provided highly damaging testimony about Trump’s efforts to coerce Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 US election.

    Trump isn’t the only one who is frustrated. According to a new ABC poll released Monday, 70 percent of Americans now find Trump’s actions in the Ukraine scandal “wrong.” Trump should be especially worried about the effect of the public hearings: 21 percent of Americans say their minds were made up on impeachment after watching that first week, with 60 percent of that group saying that Trump should be impeached and removed from office.

    We’ll see how the needle continues to move this week, as a new roster of witnesses publicly testify on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. 

  • Nancy Pelosi Says Trump Should Testify Under Oath Instead of Sounding Off on Twitter

    November 17, 2019

    J. Scott Applewhite/AP

    Ahead of the next batch of marathon impeachment hearings this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited President Donald Trump to answer questions from investigators instead of sounding off on Twitter. 

    In a Sunday interview with Face the Nation, Pelosi declined to say whether bribery would be among the articles of impeachment filed against Trump and left open the possibility that the inquiry into the president’s conduct would continue into next year. That came days after Pelosi escalated her characterization of Trump’s actions and told reporters that the testimonies heard so far “corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry and that the president abused power and violated his oath.” 

    During the Sunday interview, Pelosi suggested that House Democrats could decline to file articles of impeachment altogether if they discover exculpatory evidence, and that the president should participate in the inquiry for that reason.

    “The president could come right before the committee and talk, speak all the truth that he wants if he wants,” Pelosi said.

    Pelosi also called the president’s actions “so much worse than even what Richard Nixon did” in the Watergate affair, adding “but at some point, Richard Nixon cared about the country enough to recognize that this could not continue.” And she called Trump an “imposter” who is “way over his head.”

    The president has so far blocked members of his administration from testifying in the ongoing impeachment probe. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer jumped to Pelosi’s side, telling reporters that, “if Donald Trump doesn’t agree with what he’s hearing, doesn’t like what he’s hearing, he shouldn’t tweet.” Instead, he should testify. 

    Meanwhile, House Republicans used the Sunday shows to shift their talking points from discrediting witnesses who lacked firsthand information about Trump’s call with Ukraine to claiming that the president’s actions weren’t wrong, since Ukraine received the aid eventually and didn’t undertake the investigations in question. In a tense exchange with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Scalise argued that the “real bottom line” is that Ukraine received the aid, adding that Ukraine’s president said he hadn’t felt pressure over the aid. 

    Chief defender Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told CBS Face the Nation that the quid pro quo at issue in the impeachment inquiry didn’t happen. “The Ukrainians did nothing to—as far as investigations goes—to get the aid released,” Jordan said. “So there was never this quid pro quo that the Democrats all promise existed before President Trump released the phone call.” Eight witnesses are slated to appear for public hearings this week, including top National Security Council official Fiona Hill and US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. 

    Pelosi attacked that messages head on during Face the Nation, pointing out that the military aid was only released to Ukraine after Rep. Adam Schiff heard about the whistleblower complaint on September 9. 

    “The Republicans like to say,  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, the aid was released.'” Pelosi said. “No, the whistle was blown. The whistle was blown. And that was blown long before we heard about it. Don’t forget that in between all of that came, the inspector general, an inspector general appointed by President Trump. And the inspector general said that this was of urgent concern. And so that is what intervened.” 

  • Trump Attacks Vice President’s Aide Ahead of Her Impeachment Testimony

    November 17, 2019

    Evan Vucci/AP

    On Sunday, President Donald Trump attacked Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence, calling her a “Never Trumper” just two days before Williams is set to testify before lawmakers in the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

    The frenetic tweet came a day after lawmakers released a transcript from a closed-door hearing with Williams, who took notes while listening to the president’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president. She described the president’s insistence that Ukraine conduct investigations for the United States as “unusual and inappropriate” and told investigators that she found “specific references to be—to be more specific to the president in nature, to his personal political agenda, as opposed to a broader…foreign policy objective of the United States.”

    The president’s latest tweet is both sadly familiar and extraordinary. On Friday, while former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was testifying, the president attacked her on Twitter, saying that “everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.” When Rep. Adam Schiff asked her about the tweet in real-time, the former diplomat called the attack “very intimidating,” raising the specter that the president’s Twitter rants could be seen by Democrats as witness intimidation. 

    In an interview with Face the Nation on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to go so far as to claim the president’s attacks amounted to witness intimidation and called the president’s attack on Yavanovitch “totally wrong and inappropriate and typical of the president.”

  • David Holmes’ Closed-Door Testimony Confirms What We Knew About Donald Trump and Gordon Sondland

    November 16, 2019

    On Friday, the drama was high in the nation’s capital as former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified as part of the second day of public impeachment hearings, giving evidence to the House Intelligence Committee that suggested that President Donald J. Trump (R-New York) might, you know, not be the best president. The moving account of the 33-year veteran of the United States diplomatic corps, detailing how it felt to be criticized and threatened by her commander in chief, provided the dramatic pizazz that some theater critics felt had been missing on Wednesday, when two other witnesses had told investigators substantively devastating facts about Trump’s scheme to extort the government of Ukraine into investigating Vice President Joe Biden—but had done so in a way that lacked razzmatazz and, as of press time, not been nominated for any Golden Globes.

    But the week was still not over: Late Friday, CBS News obtained the opening statement of David Holmes’ closed-door testimony, which confirmed reports that the embassy staffer had in fact overheard a phone call in which Trump asked US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland for a progress report on the crimes.

    As I was leaving the meeting with President Zelenskyy, I was told to join the meeting with Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Yermak as note-taker. I had not expected to join that meeting and was a flight of stairs behind Ambassador Sondland as he headed to meet with Mr. Yermak. When I reached Mr. Yermak’s office, Ambassador Sondland had already gone in. I explained to Mr. Yermak’s assistant that I was supposed to join the meeting as the Embassy’s representative and strongly urged her to let me in, but she told me that that Ambassador Sondland and Mr. Yermak had insisted that the meeting be one-on-one, with no note-taker. I then waited in the anteroom until the meeting ended, along with a member of Ambassador Sondland’s staff and a member of the U.S. Embassy Kyiv staff.

    When the meeting ended, the two staffers and I accompanied Ambassador Sondland out of the Presidential Administration Building and to the embassy vehicle. Ambassador Sondland said that he wanted to go to lunch. I told Ambassador Sondland that I would be happy to join if he wanted to brief me on his meeting with Mr. Yermak or discuss other issues, and Ambassador Sondland said that I should join. The two staffers joined for lunch as well.

    The four of us went to a nearby restaurant and sat on an outdoor terrace. I sat directly across from Ambassador Sondland and the two staffers sat off to our sides. At first, the lunch was largely social. Ambassador Sondland selected a bottle of wine that he shared among the four of us, and we discussed topics such as marketing strategies for his hotel business.

    During the lunch, Ambassador Sondland said that he was going to call President Trump to give him an update. Ambassador Sondland placed a call on his mobile phone, and I heard him announce himself several times, along the lines of “Gordon Sondland holding for the President.” It appeared that he was being transferred through several layers of switchboards and assistants. I then noticed Ambassador Sondland’s demeanor change, and understood that he had been connected to President Trump. While Ambassador Sondland’s phone was not on speakerphone, I could hear the President’s voice through the earpiece of the phone. The President’s voice was very loud and recognizable, and Ambassador Sondland held the phone away from his ear for a period of time, presumably because of the loud volume.

    I heard Ambassador Sondland greet the President and explain that he was calling from Kyiv. I heard President Trump then clarify that Ambassador Sondland was in Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland replied, yes, he was in Ukraine, and went on to state that President Zelenskyy “loves your ass.” I then heard President Trump ask, “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” Ambassador Sondland replied that “he’s gonna do it,” adding that President Zelenskyy will do “anything you ask him to.” Even though I did not take notes of these statements, I have a clear recollection that these statements were made. I believe that my colleagues who were sitting at the table also knew that Ambassador Sondland was speaking with the President.

    The conversation then shifted to Ambassador Sondland’s efforts, on behalf of the President, to assist a rapper who was jailed in Sweden, and I could only hear Ambassador Sondland’s side of that part of the conversation. Ambassador Sondland told the President that the rapper was “kind of f—-d there,” and “should have pled guilty.” He recommended that the President “wait until after the sentencing or it will make it worse,” adding that the President should “let him get sentenced, play the racism card, give him a ticker-tape when he comes home.” Ambassador Sondland further told the President that Sweden “should have released him on your word,” but that “you can tell the Kardashians you tried.”

    After the call ended, Ambassador Sondland remarked that the President was in a bad mood, as Ambassador Sondland stated was often the case early in the morning. I then took the opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland for his candid impression of the President’s views on Ukraine. In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland if it was true that the President did not “give a s—t about Ukraine.” Ambassador Sondland agreed that the President did not “give a s—t about Ukraine.” I asked why not, and Ambassador Sondland stated that the President only cares about “big stuff.” I noted that there was “big stuff” going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant “big stuff” that benefits the President, like the “Biden investigation” that Mr. Giuliani was pushing. The conversation then moved on to other topics.

    As of Saturday, Republicans had yet to come up with any excuses for why this is actually good news for Trump. But, rest assured, they’re working on it.

  • Republicans’ New Trump Defense: It’s All Rudy’s Fault

    November 15, 2019

    Rudy Giuliani

    Charles Krupa/AP

    As the Ukraine scandal grows, Republican lawmakers continue searching for an effective way to defend the indefensible. They’ve said there was no quid pro quo. They’ve said quid pro quos are fine. They’ve latched onto conspiracy theories. They’ve smeared career public servants. And now they’re blaming Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

    During a break in the impeachment hearing Friday morning, Mother Jones’ David Corn caught up with Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. “I have some questions about what Mr. Giuliani was doing” in Ukraine, Lamborn told reporters. “That’s a side issue. That’s got nothing to do with the president.”

    That’s an odd statement, given that at every turn, Trump has instructed officials—both foreign and domestic—to speak directly with Giuliani about matters related to Ukraine policy. That was Trump’s response when Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, attempted to convince him to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Trump “just kept saying: ‘Talk to Rudy, talk to Rudy,'” Sondland testified. During his July 25 call with Zelensky, Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to speak over the phone with Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr about the politicized investigations that Trump wanted Ukraine to carry out. “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man,” Trump said during that conversation, according to the rough transcript released by the White House. “I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.”

    Corn asked Lamborn how he could reconcile these statements with his assertion that Giuliani’s activities had “nothing to do with the president.” Lamborn suggested that Giuliani may have been “off on his own mission doing things that people didn’t know about, kind of like a loose cannon.”

    But, Corn asked, isn’t Trump responsible for Giuliani’s involvement?

    “He may have been wrong to trust Rudy Giuliani if Giuliani was doing things on his own that were improper,” Lamborn said. “Maybe he was trusting him too much.”

    Last week, Republicans telegraphed this strategy of throwing Giuliani under the bus, suggesting that he and others acted without Trump’s knowledge or approval when they attempted to coerce Ukrainian officials into launching investigations.

    Lamborn appeared to be putting that strategy into practice Friday, but it’s a pretty tough case to make. Giuliani, after all, has insisted that his actions regarding Ukraine were on behalf of Trump, his client.

    Last month, Giuliani refused to comply with a congressional subpoena for documents related to the impeachment inquiry, citing, among other things, attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. That’s certainly not consistent with the claim that Giuliani was “off on his own mission” that had “nothing to do with the president.”

  • Mike Pompeo Took Over a Crumbling State Department. Marie Yovanovitch’s Testimony Shows How He Made It Worse.

    November 15, 2019

    Former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch addresses lawmakers as part of the second public impeachment hearing conducted by the House Intelligence Committee.Win McNamee/Getty

    When Mike Pompeo took over as secretary of state last year, he inherited a slimmed-down workforce still reeling from the impact of a 16-month hiring freeze. In his first address to State Department employees, he vowed to restore their “swagger” and rebuild the department’s flagging role in Donald Trump’s administration.

    On Friday, roughly 16 months after Pompeo’s first day at State, former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch gave House impeachment investigators a far different portrait of his leadership. Far from “swaggering,” US diplomats had been subjected to smear campaigns, co-signed by Trump, “from individuals with questionable motives.” 

    If anyone has the authority to speak about smear campaigns, it’s Yovanovitch. A Foreign Service Officer with more than three decades of experience in government, she was abruptly ousted from her post in Kyiv after pushing an anti-corruption effort—in line with stated US policy at the time—that made her a target of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who convinced the president that she was disloyal. The campaign of disinformation is in line with several instances of Trump’s cronies, in cahoots with corrupt foreign oligarchs, pushing discredited attacks against career US officials, especially those with experience during the Obama administration. The smears frequently center around liberal billionaire George Soros, who Giuliani and his allies portray—with all the relevant anti-Semitic innuendo—as a puppet master controlling US diplomats and intelligence operatives. 

    In her testimony opening remarks, Yovanovitch detailed the impact of that right-wing conspiracy feedback loop on not just her, but the State Department writ large:

    The attacks are leading to a crisis in the State Department as the policy process is visibly unravelling, leadership vacancies go unfilled, and senior and midlevel officers ponder an uncertain future and head for the doors. The crisis has moved from the impact on individuals to an impact on the institution. The State Department is being hollowed out from within at a competitive and complex time on the world stage. This is not a time to undercut our diplomats.

    It’s a familiar, if dispiriting comment on Trump’s treatment of the State Department—and Pompeo’s complicity in the attacks on career bureaucrats within it. Since his election, Trump has appointed more inexperienced ambassadors than any president since World War II, leading to roughly 40 percent of ambassadors coming from outside the Foreign Service, the corps of highly-trained diplomatic professionals meant to serve apolitically across administrations, a sharp increase from 30 percent under Obama. Among the least qualified of Trump’s handpicked diplomats is as ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. As I wrote this week, while career professionals like Yovanovitch were being pushed aside, Trump tasked personal cronies like Giuliani and Sondland, whose official portfolio does not include Ukraine, to pressure the Eastern European country’s leaders to investigate Trump’s political rivals.

    The State Department’s rot goes far beyond Trump though. As Yovanovitch made clear in her testimony, senior department officials abandoned her even as no credible evidence emerged to even partially validate the accusations leveled against her. John Sullivan, then Pompeo’s No. 2, told lawmakers last month that he never sought to confirm the allegations of disloyalty against Yovanovitch or give credence to them. He acknowledged that she served “capably and admirably.” Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Pompeo, told House investigators in a private deposition last month that he spoke three separate times with Pompeo about issuing a statement in support of Yovanovitch, but the secretary “did not respond at all.” 

    “What I was told is that there was concern that the rug would be pulled out from underneath the State Department if they put out something publicly,” Yovanovitch said in her own closed-door testimony to House investigators last month. “You know, that perhaps there would be a tweet of disagreement or something else.” As a member of Congress before joining the Trump administration, Pompeo was one of the most vocal critics of Hillary Clinton’s handling of the attack on US diplomats in Benghazi, pushing several conspiracy theories and hammering the Obama administration for not providing relevant documents to Congress. Now overseeing the department he once pilloried, Pompeo has become, as Obi-Wan Kenobi, might say, the very thing he swore to destroy.

    Assessing her own experience in the spotlight, Yovanovitch on Friday described a “hollowing out” of the State Department. Career ambassadors, scared off by Trump or unwilling to serve for a secretary who won’t protect them, have retired in droves. As if to prove her point, less than an hour into the public hearing Friday morning, Trump tweeted a series of attacks against Yovanovitch, writing, “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad.” When Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, asked her to respond to the tweets Yovanovitch’s pained expression evinced an inability, at this point, to be shocked. “It’s very intimidating,” she said. “The effect is to be intimidating.”