What to expect from Marie Yovanovitch’s impeachment testimony

Yovanovitch’s fate is a prologue to the main scandal.

House Democrats’ second public hearing in their impeachment inquiry kicks off at 9 am ET on Friday, featuring the testimony of former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. You can watch the hearing on CSPAN or other major networks, and a live stream is embedded above.

After hearing from witnesses who had a front-row seat to Trump officials’ attempts to pressure Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky this summer, Friday’s hearing will take a step back chronologically, to an earlier point in this saga.

Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who was widely respected at the State Department, was ousted from her ambassador post back in April, just days after Zelensky was elected. The alleged quid pro quo efforts unfolded after she left Kyiv. But her ouster is a story in itself, one that showcases the influence Rudy Giuliani and certain Ukrainian officials gained over US policy.

It began, Yovanovitch has said, with ominous rumors that Giuliani and a top Ukrainian official were going to “do things” to her. In the months that followed, Giuliani, Fox News hosts, and even the president’s son Don Jr. would call her corrupt or publicly push for her ouster. She was eventually told to leave Kyiv and return to the US on the next plane.

Months after Yovanovitch’s exit, President Trump made a menacing-sounding remark about her to Zelensky on the phone: “She’s going to go through some things,” he said.

Yovanovitch told her side of her story, at length, to House impeachment investigators last month. “I couldn’t imagine all the things that have happened over the last six or seven months,” she said. “I just couldn’t imagine it.”