Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich described an emotional reaction to her mention in the summary of the July 25 call President Trump made to that country’s president, saying the “color drained from my face” at the reference.
In the call, Trump described her as “bad news.” A whistleblower’s report of the call sparked the impeachment inquiry.
“I was shocked, absolutely shocked, and devastated frankly,” she said at Friday’s public impeachment hearing. “I was shocked and devastated that I would feature in a phone call between two heads of state in such a manner, where President Trump said that I was ‘bad news’ to another head of state.”
“A person who saw me reading the transcript said that the color drained from my face, I think I even had a physical reaction,” she added. “Even now words kind of fail me.”
The counsel went on to ask Yovanovich how she reacted specifically to Trump’s description of her as “bad news.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” Yovanovich said, adding that she was “appalled” the president would talk that way about any ambassador.
When Trump told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky she was “going to go through some things,” Yovanovich said, she “didn’t know what to think” but was “very concerned,” saying it “sounded like a threat.”
Asked how specifically she felt threatened, she responded she “didn’t know exactly, it’s not a very precise phrase … I really don’t know how to answer the question any further except to say that it kind felt like a vague threat, so I wondered what that meant, it concerned me.”