to Washington. She said that he told her Trump had “lost confidence” in her and that there had been a “concerted campaign” against her. According to Sullivan, the president had been attempting to remove her since summer 2018.

And yet, from the live impeachment hearings, it seemed that the president was not done with Yovanovitch. During her testimony on Nov. 15, the president tweeted:

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. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019 Chairman Adam Schiff gave Yovanovitch an opportunity to respond during her publicconspiracy theories, that would be bad enough. But it shows a great deal more than that. The second major element of the story is the development of what Amb. William Taylor called the “irregular channel” for achieving the president’s objectives in Ukraine.

Zelensky ran for president of Ukraine on a popular anti-corruption platform. Yovanovitch noted that this created “fear among the political elite.” Zelensky was elected on April 21, 2019. That same day, in a very positive call, Trump called Zelensky, congratulated him and extended an invitation for him to visit the White House. Zelensky was sworn in on May 20 and immediately called a snap parliamentary election, which his party won decisively on July 21.

Nearly all of the witnesses stated that during most of 2019, they did not