Maria Yovanovich served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine until she was removed by President Trump earlier this year, a move for which House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is angrily blaming Rudy Giuliani.
When he spoke to reporters about the issue on Monday, Schiff began by praising Yovanovich, highlighting “what a dedicated public servant she is.”
“This is someone who served the country with distinction for decades,” he claimed.
“It is someone who is also one of the first witnesses to this irregular back channel that the president established with Rudy Giuliani and the damage it was doing to America’s national security and foreign policy interests. How it was working was in opposition, not in support of US foreign policy objectives.”
Justifiable mistrust
Schiff was referring to the unofficial Ukrainian diplomatic team Trump assembled out of fear that the existing bureaucratic structure there could not be trusted to carry out his directives.
“The embassy in Ukraine was a ‘Hillary Clinton for president’ office,” Fox News reported Giuliani as saying. “And they were looking to dig up dirt on President Trump.”
“There was a lot more collusion with Ukraine than in Russia, where there doesn’t appear to be any. They were trying to bring Trump down,” the former New York City mayor insisted.
President Trump also expressed concern about Yovanovich during his July 25 call with the leader of Ukraine.
“The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news, and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that,” he remarked.
“A vicious smear campaign”
However, Schiff characterized those complaints as being part of “a vicious smear campaign in which the State Department at the highest levels acknowledged had no merit whatsoever.”
“That smear campaign,” he went on, “orchestrated by this irregular channel, was successful at removing a U.S. ambassador and tarring her reputation because you see the president’s comments about the ambassador in the call record.”
Yovanovich was appointed by then President Barack Obama back in 2016. Just prior to the time of her appointment, she was serving as dean of the School of Language Studies at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.
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