page_title: Marie Yovanovitch
section_title: Congressional testimony
hierarchical_section_title: Marie Yovanovitch / Career / U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine / Congressional testimony
caption_attribution_description: English: Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch has a long history of public service and is known as an anti-corruption champion. Today, we will hear from her directly about how her removal from Ukraine helped open the door for President Trump to pursue political investigations for his own gain.
context_page_description: Marie Louise "Masha" Yovanovitch is an American diplomat and senior member of the United States Foreign Service. She served in multiple State Department posts, including Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan; U.S. Ambassador to Armenia; Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs; and Ambassador to Ukraine. Yovanovitch is a diplomat in residence at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. On January 31, 2020 it was reported that she has retired from the State Department.
  While ambassador to Ukraine, Yovanovitch was the target of a conspiracy-driven smear campaign, amplified by President Donald Trump and his allies. In May 2019, Trump abruptly recalled Yovanovitch from her post following claims by Trump surrogates that she was undermining Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former vice president and 2020 U.S. presidential election candidate Joe Biden. Yovanovitch's removal preceded a July 2019 phone call by Trump in which he attempted to pressure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden.
context_section_description: On October 11, 2019, Yovanovitch gave closed-door deposition testimony before the House Oversight and Reform, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees. A transcript of Yovanovitch's full testimony was released to the public on November 5, 2019.
  The State Department sought to stop Yovanovitch from testifying before Congress, in line with Trump's policy of refusing to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena, stating that "the illegitimate order from the Trump Administration not to cooperate has no force"—and Yovanovitch proceeded to give testimony. 
  In her testimony, Yovanovitch testified that Trump had pressured the State Department to remove her, and that she was "incredulous" to be removed based on "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives." Yovanovitch stated that after her removal, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan had told her that she had done nothing wrong but that the State Department had been under political pressure from Trump to remove her since summer 2018. Sullivan, in his own testimony to Congress, corroborated Yovanovitch's testimony, confirmed that Yovanovitch was the target of a smear campaign, and publicly affirmed that Yovanovitch had served "admirably and capably" as ambassador.
  Yovanovitch testified that her removal was the result of "significant tension between those who seek to transform the country and those who wish to continue profiting from the old ways," and that false narratives were pushed from an "unfortunate alliance between Ukrainians who continue to operate within a corrupt system, and Americans who either did not understand that corrupt system, or who may have chosen, for their own purposes, to ignore it." Yovanovitch described the State Department under Trump as "attacked and hollowed out from within," and warned that Russia and other U.S. rivals would benefit "when bad actors in countries beyond Ukraine see how easy it is to use fiction and innuendo to manipulate our system." Yovanovitch testified that when she sought advice from U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland on how to respond to the smear campaign, Sondland recommended that she tweet praise for Trump.
  Yovanovitch also detailed attempts by Giuliani to interfere in the State Department's consular decisions, by attempting to override a U.S. visa denial for former Ukrainian official Viktor Shokin, who had been declared ineligible for travel in the United States based on his "known corrupt activities." Yovanovitch also said that she was "shocked" and felt threatened by Trump's statement, in a phone call with Zelensky, that "she's going to go through some things," testifying that she was very concerned "that the President would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart."
  Yovanovitch testified to Congress “My parents fled Communist and Nazi regimes. Having seen, firsthand, the war and poverty and displacement common to totalitarian regimes, they valued the freedom and democracy the U.S. offers and that the United States represents. And they raised me to cherish those values.”
  On November 15, 2019, Yovanovitch testified during the public impeachment hearings. In her testimony, Yovanovitch detailed how Giuliani and his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman worked with a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor to orchestrate a smear campaign against her, oust her from her post as ambassador, and "circumvent official channels" of Ukraine policy. Yovanovitch also testified, "Perhaps it was not surprising that when our anti-corruption efforts got in the way of the desire for profit or power, Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules sought to remove me. 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?" While Yovanovitch was testifying, Trump denigrated her on 
caption: Yovanovitch being sworn in at the public impeachment inquiry hearing
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