Free Republic

The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified Friday about President Donald Trump firing her amid an alleged “smear campaign,” but firing ambassadors appointed by former presidents is commonplace. Former President Barack Obama fired all ambassadors appointed by former President George W. Bush in 2008, The Washington Post previously reported. Yovanovitch testified Friday that the Trump administration, including the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, “kneecapped” her. She said State Department leaders did not support her after being recalled in May. “Political ambassadors sometimes are permitted to stay on briefly during a new administration, but the sweeping nature of the...

Fox News host Bret Baier said Friday that President Trump's tweet criticizing former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was "adding an article of impeachment real-time." "That was a turning point in this hearing so far," Baier said on Twitter of Trump's tweet. "She was already a sympathetic witness & the President’s tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation -adding an article of impeachment real-time," he added.

We have conducted an in-depth analysis of Obama-era White House visitor logs, and we have learned a good deal about the people who controversial CIA employee Eric Ciaramella met with while assigned to the White House. Ciaramella reportedly was detailed to the Obama White House in 2015 and returned to the CIA during the Trump administration in 2017. Real Clear Investigations named Ciaramella as possibly being the whistleblower whose complaint sparked impeachment proceedings against President Trump. As reported by the Examiner, Fox News’ legal analyst Gregg Jarrett indicated that a key takeaway was the “reported direct relationship” Ciaramella had with...

Fiona Hill’s Lawyer Says Sondland Lied (10:16 a.m.) The lawyer for Fiona Hill, a key witness in the House impeachment inquiry, accused Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, of lying in his testimony about interactions with her. “Sondland has fabricated communications with Dr. Hill, none of which were over coffee,” Lee Wolosky said in a tweet Wednesday. Sondland had testified that he and Hill had a coffee at the time she left her job as a senior aide on the White House’s National Security Council. Sondland said she had never expressed “critical comments” to him about President...

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch said during her closed-door testimony on October 11 as part of House Democrats’ impeachment probe that she did not know if her staff monitored Donald Trump, Jr. and other conservative figures on social media, a recently released transcript shows. Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) ran through a list of names of mostly conservative media figures’ names and asked if her staff was monitoring them. The names included: Jack [Posobiec]; DonaId Trump, Jr.; Laura Ingraham; Sean Hannity; Michael McFaul; Dan Bongino; Ryan [Saavedra]; Rudy Giuliani; Sebastian Gorka; John Solomon; Lou Dobbs; Pam Gellar; and Sara...

Testimony of veteran diplomat Marie Yovanovitch exposes Trump’s paralysing hold on the administration What shines through the testimony of Marie Yovanovitch is her disorientation. She is a veteran diplomat at the peak of her career, and in one of the most challenging but important posts in US foreign policy. But she had no clue what was happening inside her own government. On 24 April this year, she received a call from Carol Perez, the director general of the foreign service, speaking to her in cryptic tones as if Yovanovitch’s life was in danger if she remained at her ambassadorial post...

Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told lawmakers behind closed doors Friday that she was recalled earlier this year after “unfounded and false claims” against her, as well as continued pressure from President Trump on the State Department to remove her -- as she denied being “disloyal” to the president. “Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the President, I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives,” she said in a scathing...

Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, the Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Eliot L. Engel, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Acting Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, released the transcripts of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch and former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State Ambassador P. Michael McKinley.

Government watchdog group Judicial Watch last week filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the State Department. The group believes prominent conservative journalists, public figures and those with ties to President Donald Trump were being monitored by the State Department in Ukraine under the direction of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was appointed to her post by President Barack Obama. "Judicial Watch has obtained information indicating Yovanovitch may have violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons using State Department resources," the watchdog group said in a press release. "Yovanovitch reportedly ordered...

He just announced this on Hannity

Democrats say the State Department watchdog used a closed-door briefing on Wednesday to give them "conspiracy theories" tied to Ukraine, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and former Vice President Joe Biden. State Department Inspector General Steve Linick leaves a meeting in a secure area at the Capitol where he met with Senate staff about the State Department and Ukraine, in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) © Associated Press State Department Inspector General Steve Linick leaves a meeting in a secure area at the Capitol where he met with Senate staff about the State Department...

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to President Trump’s interactions with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a report. The subpoena, according to Politico, demands that Pompeo provide those documents by October 4.The committee also plans to depose five State Department officials, including Kurt Volker, the administration’s special envoy to Ukraine, who reportedly arranged for Rudy Giuliani to meet with high-level Ukrainian officials. The committee also wants to meet with Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump removed as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman...

he decision to dismiss Yovanovitch was made by Trump after the meeting with the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. This was stated to “Strana” by the former people’s deputy Andrey Artemenko, who lives in the US. He gave evidences in front of a panel of jurors within the framework of the investigation of the special prosecutor Robert Mueller. “Firstly, the White House started to look at members of the team of Obama and Biden, who were appointed in different embassies including in Ukraine. Secondly, there is an active investigation into the interference of Ukraine in the 2016 US presidential election,...

President Donald Trump did not exert pressure or offer any repayment when he asked Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to probe the dealings of former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, according to a transcript (pdf) of a call between the two leaders released by the White House on Sept. 25. During the call, Zelensky was the first to bring up Rudy Giuliani, the Trump attorney who had looked into the Ukrainian business dealings of Hunter Biden. In response, Trump noted that Giuliani is a “respected man” and told Zelensky that he would like to have Giuliani call...

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...

A State Department official who was awaiting confirmation to be U.S. Ambassador to Albania communicated with the former British spy Christopher Steele and supplied information to a senior DOJ official after and before the 2016 presidential election. Former State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Kathleen Ann Kavalec’s nomination was withdrawn recently by President Trump, according to a Senior White House official who spoke to SaraACarter.com. Kavalec was awaiting to be confirmed as Ambassador to Albania, but information surfaced that she had personally met and was in communication with Steele before and after the 2016 presidential election. Kavalec, a long time State...