OPINION:
Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, may have had her day in Congress, telling a friendly House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff all about the devastating humiliation she suffered when President Donald Trump pulled her from her post — something, by the way, that’s regularly done to diplomats serving during change-of-administration times.
And she may taken her pot shots at Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, by accusing that he headed the smear campaign against her character that led to her loss of cushy job.
But that smoke has cleared and a new day has dawned. And Giuliani, in an interview with One America News, made clear: Yovanovitch is hardly a poor suffering nonpartisan soul.
“There are at least five Ukrainian officials who are willing to testify against her, not anonymously, like their whistleblower, not hearsay, like their first two witnesses — this may be hard for Adam Schiff to take — but they would actually give real testimony. And what they would say basically is that she was very, very pro-Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election,” Giuliani said.
That’s interesting because Yovanovitch, in her own testimony, acknowledged that it wasn’t a proper diplomat role to sway elections.
But that’s interesting, too, because of what Giuliani went on to say.
“There are five witnesses who say that she instructed the prosecutor general of the Ukraine to dismiss four cases,” he said, to OAN’s White House correspondent, Chanel Rion. “Two of those cases involved Ukrainian collusion with Democrats to hurt Donald Trump. One of them involved a company owned by George Soros. There are five witnesses who are willing to testify to that. None of them were called. None of them were interviewed.”
Where are those witnesses?
Not on Schiff’s list, apparently.
Here’s what the media wants the takeaway from Yovanovitch’s testimony to be: “Ousted ambassador says she felt intimidated by Trump attacks,” The Star Tribune wrote in a headline.
“Trump attacks ambassador as she testifies that his words in Ukraine call made her feel threatened,” CNBC wrote.
“Ex-Envoy to Ukraine ’Devastated’ as Trump Vilified Her,” The New York Times wrote.
But if what Giuliani says is true — and honestly, that’d be a fairly easy vetting to make; Democrats need only call forward these five witnesses to publicly testify — then it’s not just Yovanovitch’s character that will be called into question.
It’s the validity of the whole Democrat-pressed impeachment inquiry into Trump’s Ukraine call.
After all, if one of the Democrats’ leading, opening, star witnesses in a case alleging Trump’s guilt of “bribery” — an impeachable offense — is shown to be a pro-Hillary Clinton anti-Trumping force, imagine how the rest of Schiff’s witnesses, the Tier Two witnesses set to speak this week, will crumble.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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