福克斯新闻主持人克里斯华莱士赞扬了前乌克兰大使玛丽约瓦诺维奇周五早上在众议院的首次证词。
华莱士说:“我认为如果你不被感动——我们会在盘问中看到发生了什么——但是如果你今天没有被玛丽·约瓦诺维奇的证词感动，你就没有脉搏了。”。
他补充说，约瓦诺维奇“在这里的指控，这个被指控的丑闻中表现出人性的一面。”
约瓦诺维奇周五早上出现在众议院情报委员会，就她被解除驻乌克兰大使职务作证。她是第三位参加正在进行的对唐纳德·特朗普总统弹劾调查公开听证会的证人。
约瓦诺维奇被几任不同总统任命为大使，包括共和党和民主党，并于2016年8月开始在乌克兰任职。2019年5月，她突然被撤职，尽管她说，她的老板向她保证她没有做错什么。
她被解雇的原因已经成为众议院调查的焦点之一。在上月的一次秘密证词中，约瓦诺维奇告诉国会，特朗普和他的私人律师鲁迪·朱利安尼自2018年以来一直在对她进行诽谤，因为她拒绝让朱利安尼利用美国大使馆获取拜登家族的丑闻。
约瓦诺维奇周五上午告诉立法者，在她数十年的联邦政府生涯中，她曾见过任何总统“无故”罢免大使，理由是有人指控国务院知道这是假的。
她还说，解雇她是一件“可怕”的事情，也不是她想象的结束长期外交生涯的方式。
“我的意思是，在为我们国家服务了33年之后，这太可怕了。这不是我希望我职业生涯结束的方式，”她告诉立法者。
听证会举行时，特朗普在推特上诋毁这位前大使。总统写道，“玛丽·约瓦诺维奇到哪里都变坏了”，他有“任命大使的绝对权利”，只要他认为合适。
玛丽·约瓦诺维奇走到哪里都变坏了。她从索马里开始，进展如何？然后快进到乌克兰，在那里，乌克兰新总统在我和他的第二个电话中对她说了不愉快的话。任命大使是美国总统的绝对权利。
——唐纳德·特朗普2019年11月15日
众议院情报委员会主席亚当·希夫在听证会上大声朗读了这条推文。希夫给了约瓦诺维奇回应特朗普言论的机会。前大使说:“我不认为我有这样的权力。……我实际上认为，在我多年服务的地方，我和其他人已经明显地让美国和我服务过的国家变得更好。”
华莱士和布雷特·拜尔指出，总统的推特可被视为篡改证人，这是众议院弹劾特朗普的另一项罪行。
“这是迄今为止听证会上的一个转折点。拜尔在推特上写道:“她已经是一个富有同情心的证人&总统撕扯她的推特让希夫能够实时指出这是证人篡改或恐吓——实时增加了一篇弹劾文章。”。
11月15日，玛丽·约瓦诺维奇在国会山的朗沃斯众议院办公楼向众议院情报委员会作证。在委员会举行的第二次弹劾听证会上，众议院民主党人继续对唐纳德·特朗普总统试图将美国对乌克兰的军事援助与该国对其政治对手的调查联系起来的行为进行辩护。赢得麦克纳尼/盖蒂
FOX HOST SAYS IF YOU'RE NOT 'MOVED' BY YOVANOVITCH'S UKRAINE TESTIMONY IN IMPEACHMENT HEARING, 'YOU DON'T HAVE A PULSE'
Fox News host Chris Wallace praised former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch for her opening testimony before the House of Representatives on Friday morning.
"I think that if you are not moved—and we'll see what happens in the cross-examination—but if you are not moved by the testimony of Marie Yovanovitch today, you don't have a pulse," Wallace said.
He added that Yovanovitch "puts a human face on the allegations here, this alleged scandal."
Yovanovitch appeared before the House Intelligence Committee on Friday morning to testify about her removal as the ambassador to Ukraine. She is the third witness to participate in public hearings in the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.
Yovanovitch was appointed ambassador under several different presidents, both Republican and Democrat, and began serving in Ukraine in August 2016. In May 2019, she was abruptly removed from her post even though, she says, her bosses assured her she'd done nothing wrong.
The reasoning behind her dismissal has become one focus of the House investigation. In a closed-door testimony last month, Yovanovitch told Congress that Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani were engaged in a smear campaign against her since 2018 because she refused to let Giuliani use the U.S. Embassy in his attempts to obtain dirt on the Bidens.
Yovanovitch told lawmakers on Friday morning that she had ever seen any president remove an ambassador "without cause, based on allegations that the State Department knew to be false" during her decades-long career in the federal government.
She also said that her dismissal was a "terrible" thing to experience and was not the way she envisioned ending her long career in the foreign service.
"I mean, after 33 years of service to our country, it was terrible. It's not the way I wanted my career to end," she told lawmakers.
As the hearing was taking place, Trump took to Twitter to disparage the former ambassador. The president wrote that "everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad" and that he has the "absolute right to appoint ambassadors" as he sees fit.
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
The tweet was read aloud by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff during the hearing. Schiff gave Yovanovitch the opportunity to respond to Trump's remarks. The former ambassador said: "I don't think I have such powers.… I actually think that where I've served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better for the U.S. and in the countries I have served in."
Wallace and Bret Baier noted that the president's tweet could be considered witness tampering, which is another crime that could be added to the House's articles of impeachment against Trump.
"That was a turning point in this hearing so far. She was already a sympathetic witness & the President's tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation -adding an article of impeachment real-time," Baier wrote on Twitter.
Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill November 15. In the second impeachment hearing held by the committee, House Democrats continue to build a case against President Donald Trump’s efforts to link U.S. military aid for Ukraine to the nation’s investigation of his political rivals.WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY
