Marie Yovanovitch testifies in round two of the Trump impeachment hearings

Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine testifies Friday in the second round of public impeachment hearings before the House Intelligence Committee. She’s the only witness appearing on Friday.

She has said in a prior closed-door session that she was the victim of a smear campaign by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and that the president personally pressured the State Department to remove her from her role, according to a transcript of that hearing.

She said the deputy secretary of State had told her in April after she was fired that “the president had lost confidence in me,” NBC News reported.

“He added that there had been a concerted campaign against me, and that the department had been under pressure from the president to remove me since the summer of 2018,” Yovanovitch told lawmakers in her opening statement during the closed-door session last month.

Yovanovitch, an Obama appointee, recalled that her firing came as Trump and his allies found her to be an impediment to their desire to have the Ukrainians open investigations into his political rivals.