Ousted US envoy testifies at Trump impeachment hearing

An ousted US envoy to Ukraine who said she felt threatened by Donald Trump testified Friday on Day Two of impeachment hearings looking into whether the president abused his office for personal political gain.

Earlier witnesses in the inquiry said ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was removed after a smear campaign involving Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, accused of helping to coordinate the president's effort to pressure Kiev into investigating his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Yovanovitch, a highly regarded career diplomat who was pulled from her post in May, will now tell her side of the story in an open, nationally televised setting, as Democratic lawmakers sharpen their case against the president.

"Ambassador Yovanovitch was serving our nation's interest in fighting corruption in Ukraine," House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, who is overseeing the impeachment probe, said in his opening statement.

"But she was considered an obstacle to the furtherance of the president's personal and political agenda. For that, she was smeared and cast aside." Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the panel, hit back by dismissing what he called "Watergate fantasies."
And she expressed concern about retaliation, especially after learning that Trump, on his July 25 telephone call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, described her as "bad news" and told Zelensky that Yovanovitch was "going to go through some things."
Taylor said an aide at the embassy in Kiev overheard the call between Trump and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, in which Trump asked about the status of the "investigations."