The second day of the House Intelligence Committee's public impeachment hearings starts at 9am Eastern—and former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch is expected to recount how she was abruptly ousted at the end of April. In closed-door testimony released last week, Yovanovitch said she was told that Rudy Giuliani and other allies of President Trump were "looking to hurt" her after claims in right-wing media that she was an enemy of the president. She said US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland told her that the best way to respond to the attacks was to tweet in support of Trump, USA Today reports. Democrats are expected to highlight her credibility and her records as a 33-year veteran of the State Department who has served in countries including Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, Politico reports.
Yovanovitch is among those who have said Giuliani and others were running a "shadow foreign policy" to serve Trump's political interests. Yovanovitch was mentioned in Trump's July 25 phone call to Ukraine's president, the AP notes. "The former ambassador .. the woman, was bad news," Trump said, according to the rough transcript that was released. "She's going to go through some things." The Washington Post says having a woman testify at the hearing will be a "moment of reckoning on gender" for the president. "Seeing someone like Masha Yovanovitch come forward is going to be an extremely difficult moment for Trump," says Nancy McEldowney, a former ambassador to Bulgaria and former director of the Foreign Service Institute. (More Trump impeachment stories.)
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