Posted on 11/15/2019 8:11:37 AM PST by robowombat
Ousted ambassador describes State Department in 'crisis' in dramatic impeachment testimony BY OLIVIA BEAVERS - 11/15/19 09:58 AM EST
The former top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine described a “crisis” at the State Department during her public impeachment testimony on Friday, voicing concern that the agency’s failure to protect foreign service officials who faced attacks for their work overseas put U.S. interests at risk.
Marie Yovanovitch, who privately testified to House investigators last month, described a smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani, corrupt Ukrainian officials and disreputable media figures who successfully facilitated her removal as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in May.
“[T]he attacks are leading to a crisis in the State Department as the policy process is visibly unravelling, leadership vacancies going unfilled, and senior and mid-level officers ponder an uncertain future and head for the doors,” Yovanovitch testified. "This not a time to undercut our diplomats,” she emphasized.
Yovanovitch also painted her removal as a “dangerously wrong” precedent in which private interests can remove an American diplomat is who seeking to faithfully carry out U.S. foreign policy.
“What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them, and working together they apparently succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. Ambassador.”
“How could our system fail like this? How is it that foreign corrupt interests could manipulate our government,” Yovanovitch testified, adding that this played into the hands of “autocrats” like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And Yovanovitch said she remains disappointed that the top brass of the State Department declined to defend her against these attacks, even after senior State Department officials pressed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other top officials to issue a statement of support.
"At the closed deposition, I expressed grave concerns about the degradation of the Foreign Service over the past few years and the failure of the State Department leadership to push back as foreign and corrupt interests apparently hijacked our Ukraine policy," she said in her opening remarks.
“I remain disappointed that the Department’s leadership and others have declined to acknowledge that the attacks against me and others are dangerously wrong," Yovanovitch continued.
The career civil servant, who has served for more than three decades, said this issue is trickling down to affect other foreign officers who are seeking to represent U.S. interests abroad.
“This is about far more than me or a couple of individuals. As Foreign Service professionals are being denigrated and undermined, the institution is also being degraded. This will soon cause real harm, if it hasn’t already,” she said.
Yovanovitch also expressed dismay that corrupt Ukrainians, who were upset about her anti-corruption efforts, could find Americans willing to work with them to facilitate her removal.
These self important prigs really believe the inside the beltway propaganda.
Hillary certainly left her mark on THAT office. Sheesh
Foggy Bottom isn’t in crisis. It’s engaging in sedition.
Foggy Bottom being in a crisis comes decades too late. Imagine if all the commies in FDR’s State Department been in such a crisis?
She was gone in May.....Anything she knows after that date is “out of play”. I think it’s called espionage.
One of the reasons I voted for Trump was to put the State Department in crisis!
Is she using her baby voice?
The State Department will be in crisis from my perspective until there are mass firings to replace the Ivy League IYIs (Intellectuals Yet Idiots) who inhabit the place with deplorables from flyover country.
So? The state department is a den of traitors.
I am hoping questions about the Soros led organizations that the state department are asked. This has the potential to be very interesting because it is clear that the Obama administration directly interfered through her and by using a web of NGO’s they were partnered with prior to the election of Trump.
The GOP needs to get all of this on the record.
The easiest place to start would be to ask her if she made statements critical of the President to Ukrainian officials after the election. That allegation has never been answered.
Ousted = Draining The Swamp
My heart bleeds peanut butter and jelly for these subversive scum.
If you do the bidding of the Commander in Chief at the time, you have nothing to worry about, do you?
Did these well-paid employees ever have a success? We look around the world and for the past 40 years have seen nothing but State Dept. failures. Yet these Ivy Leaguers think they are indispensable.
President Trump should have asked everyone at State for their resignations on Inauguration Day.
All she needs to say is that she disagreed with and undermined the foreign policy of the current President of the US and got fired for it.
Swamp.
Drain it.
Another angry anti Trump Democrat weighs in with her opinions. This is damning for sure.
Hi.
If what OLIVIA BEAVERS writes for the “Hill,” is true, then President Trump is doing exactly what/why I voted for him.
5.56mm
Rumor Has It Ukraine officials attempted to deliver information about Corruptions in the previous administration to this Ambassador. She routed it to the Deep state operatives within the doj where it was buried.
And we all thought that our military protected us.
All along it has been these nerds and twerps embedded deep in the State department that have stood in the breach.
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