Hillary Clinton tweeted Friday about “witness intimidation” after President Donald Trump’s Twitter post about former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was read aloud during a House impeachment hearing.
“Witness intimidation is a crime, no matter who does it. Full stop,” Clinton said:
Yovanovitch was testifying before the House Intelligence Committee as part of its impeachment inquiry even though the former diplomat was dismissed by the president many weeks before the July 25 phone call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky that launched the Democrat’s partisan effort.
She would have been unaware of Trump’s tweet, but Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) read it to her during the hearing, which said, in part:
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors…..They call it “serving at the pleasure of the President.” The U.S. now has a very strong and powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is called, quite simply, America First! With all of that, however, I have done FAR more for Ukraine than O.
“Ambassador Yovanovitch, as we sit here testifying the president is attacking you on Twitter, and I’d like to give you the chance to respond,” Schiff said during the hearing, reading off Trump’s tweets.
Trump’s enemies, including Democrats like Clinton, quickly took hold of the witness intimidation talking point even though Yovanovitch is not a witness in a criminal proceeding and freely expressed her opinion throughout her time in front of the committee, including criticizing the president.
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