The Daily - The Effort to Discredit the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine

Episode Date: October 15, 2019

This week, we’re producing episodes of “The Daily” from The New York Times’s Washington bureau. The impeachment inquiry is entering a pivotal phase as Congress returns from recess. The White House’s strategy to block the investigation is beginning to crumble, with five administration officials set to testify before House investigators.On Monday, those committees heard testimony about why the president removed the longtime ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, just two months before the call in which he asked the Ukrainian president for a favor. Today, we look at how Ms. Yovanovitch ended up at the center of the impeachment process. Guests: Sharon LaFraniere, an investigative reporter based in Washington, and Rachel Quester and Clare Toeniskoetter, producers for “The Daily.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background coverage: Marie L. Yovanovitch told House investigators that she was removed from office on the basis of “false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.” The effort to pressure Ukraine so alarmed John Bolton, then the national security adviser, that he told an aide to alert White House lawyers. “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” an aide quoted him as saying of President Trump’s personal lawyer.

Shall we? Should I start? Do it. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. All this week, we're in Washington. Okay, this is it. To the Bureau.

As Congress returns from recess, the impeachment inquiry enters a pivotal phase, and the White House strategy to block the investigation begins to crumble, with five administration officials set to testify before House committees. Washington. Okay, so we've got Fiona Hill, the former Russia expert on the National Security Council staff on the Hill as we speak. She's behind closed doors. On Monday, those committees heard testimony about why the president removed the longtime ambassador to Ukraine just two months before his fateful call with the president of Ukraine asking for a favor.

It's a busy week on the Hill. He's going to testify on Thursday. We've got another State Department official testifying tomorrow. Today, the story of how that ambassador ended up at the center of the impeachment process. It's Tuesday, October 15th. Sharon LaFreniere is an investigative reporter in Is it a dark, sweaty room? Yeah. Is it sweaty? All right. No, it's not too sweaty. Sharon Lafreniere is an investigative reporter in the Washington Bureau. Okay, go ahead. And we'll jump in. And it'll be great. Sharon, tell us about this ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. So she's a very experienced diplomat.

Maria Yovanovitch to be ambassador to the Republic of Armenia. She's a 33-year veteran of the State Department. She's a three-time ambassador. George W. Bush appointed her to be ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and then to Armenia. It's an honor for me to appear before you today. I'm honored also by the confidence that President Bush and Secretary Rice have shown in me by nominating me for the post Obama appointed her to be ambassador to Ukraine. So she's a career diplomat.

She's a career diplomat. And her sort of trademark, what people mostly say about her, is how cautious she is. She is a very careful diplomat. U.S. policy is very clear. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. And we are absolutely rock solid on that. You know, she doesn't get out over skis. She's very, very policy oriented, very attentive to protocol, propriety, instructions, and just by nature, a cautious person. And we are very active on the diplomatic side to ensure that Russia's physical occupation of Crimea

does not become sort of a creeping occupation through other ways. By the time Trump's elected, she's ambassador to Ukraine. She's been in the embassy as ambassador then for about six months or so, and she continues on. Trump is the sixth president that she has served. Of both parties. Of both parties, correct. There has been a strong bipartisan commitment to Ukraine's independence, and I'm confident that will continue. So what happens after President Trump renews her ambassadorship?

She carries on. In early March, she gets this communique from the State Department saying, hey, can you stay on? Can we extend your ambassadorship into 2020? And then less than two months later, she gets another communique from the State Department, which basically is word for word, get on the next plane to Washington. And her ambassadorship at that point is over. So she's asked to stay on. She's asked to stay on. And within weeks, she's told she's finished.

Exactly. And at the time, how much notice does this attract, the fact that she's essentially fired? Very little. We didn't write a thing about it. Hmm. I mean, I guess generally we don't pay that much attention to ambassadors. They carry out policy. They don't set policy.

But, of course, we're paying attention now. Right. So let me take you back to last year because that's when it began. So let me take you back to last year, because that's when it began. Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, had two associates who were working with him and for him in Ukraine. So that's Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. They are both U.S. citizens, but they're working with Giuliani. But they are also working for themselves, for their own personal interests. They are going after Yovanovitch because they think that she is an obstacle to their effort

to get a deal with the state-owned gas company that's run by the Ukraine. And it's been turned down by the chief executive of this company. And he's a reform-minded executive, and the ambassador is supporting him, and they want to get him out, and they want to get her out, too. Okay, let me just try to understand. Two men who work with Rudy Giuliani, the president's private lawyer, they are trying to make a buck in Ukraine. They want to do a deal with an energy company there. They're having some trouble. They blame the CEO of that company for standing in their way, and they simultaneously blame Yovanovitch. Why do they blame her?

What's the connection? diplomats have always paid attention to Ukraine's energy policy because energy is sort of this nexus in which Russia tries to exert influence over Ukraine. And basically, it's a font of corruption. So the U.S. has always been saying, you know, you need good governance here in your state energy company. So that's what Yovanovitch was saying. No more backroom deals. You need good governance in this company. And how does Giuliani come into the picture? Okay, so you must have like a white board

where you keep track of all these characters. It is. Well, okay, there's a parallel track too, right? There's another guy, Yuri Lutsenko. This is a guy who isn't even a lawyer, but he's running the prosecutor's office. He's also against her because she's telling him that you got to clean up the corruption in your prosecutor general's office. And so she's putting pressure on him and he doesn't like that either. Right. So she's got these enemies with these two associates of Giuliani. She's got this enemy in this prosecutor, right? And all three of those guys sort of join up together along with Giuliani. So just to complete this set of characters that you have brought on stage, you have Giuliani's associates.

You have the prosecutor in Ukraine. You have Rudy Giuliani. You have Rudy Giuliani. All of them begin to see a common foe in this U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who sees herself as somebody trying to fight corruption and bad business practices in Ukraine. Right. And they start to spread stories about her that she's disloyal to Trump. Marie Yovanovitch. Yovanovitch, an Obama holdover, remains in The Post today. She's reportedly demonstrated clear anti-Trump bias. That there are private recordings in which she's supposedly disdainful to Trump. She is known and reported by people there to have badmouthed the president of the United States, Donald Trump, to have told Ukrainians not to listen to him or obey his policy because he was going to be impeached. So while they're working in Ukraine, they're also exporting this campaign against her to the U.S.

One person who they approach is Pete Sessions. I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear. Remember that? It looked bleak. The press said conservatives were an endangered species. I said it was time to get to work. Who is then a Republican congressman from Texas who's running for re-election. But I'm not finished yet. We have to roll back the Obama agenda and get businesses hiring nationwide. I'm Pete Sessions and I approve this message.

He is head of the House Rules Committee, so he has a pretty important position. And they say, we are going to help you raise $20,000 for your reelection campaign, and we also want your help in getting Yovanovitch out. So Sessions then does write a letter to Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, and says, this ambassador is disloyal to Trump. Wow. Yeah. And that's really the beginning of the whole campaign against her in the U.S.

So these men, after successfully spreading the word that Yovanovitch is no good in their telling in Ukraine, they're asking a member of the United States Congress to try to discredit her within the government of the U.S. Correct. And he does it. Yes. By this spring, it's really sort of hit a fever pitch. What do you mean? Well, in that Donald Trump Jr. gets on Twitter

and says we have to get rid of more of these Joker ambassadors like her. Mentions her. Yeah, mentions her. And four days later, Giuliani takes a whole packet of information about her, which he's gathered from these three guys, and puts it in Mike Pompeo's hands. Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State. Wow.

Right? And says, this is a bad ambassador. You have to investigate this. And the result of that is that Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, has this letter from this Republican lawmaker, and he has this packet of negative information about Yovanovitch from Giuliani. And of course, Pompeo is Yovanovitch's boss. Correct. So this campaign is coming from a lot of angles. Right. Okay, so what happens next? Correct. So this campaign is coming from a lot of angles. Right.

Okay, so what happens next? So next it's late April, and she gets that letter from the State Department, or some kind of communique from the State Department, get on the next plane to Washington. And her boss is about to tell her that her ambassadorship is going to be cut short. And what kind of explanation is given? So the explanation is you haven't done anything wrong. This is the deputy secretary of state saying this. This isn't like normal cases when ambassadors are recalled for cause. In other words, you've done something, you know, really terrible and you haven't done anything wrong.

He says that to her. Yes, he says that to her, according to her. But there's been a campaign against you, a very concerted campaign against you for a long time. And we've been under pressure from the president to remove you since the summer of 2018. So we're bringing you home. He sounds almost embarrassed. Yeah, apologetic maybe. So she just leaves the job.

Yeah, she leaves the job and there is a reaction. We don't know it at the time, but there is a pretty strong reaction within the State Department. there is a pretty strong reaction within the State Department. What do you mean? Well, at the embassy back in Kiev, the officials who are left there are said to be seething about this, that, you know, this is really unusual. This is really bizarre.

We'll be right back. ambassador to Ukraine as a result of her activities there, which were complained of by Congressman Session. Sharon, so are we to understand at this point that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has told the president that he thinks Yovanovitch should go? And that that would suggest that the information Pompeo has received from this Republican congressman and from this packet of information from Giuliani that this was effective. So we don't know whether Pompeo told the president that she should go. It could be that the president told Pompeo she should go. We do know Rudy wanted her to go. So maybe Rudy is the key advisor. Maybe he tells the president, this is somebody who's disloyal to you, and the president tells Pompeo, get rid of her. It could have been that way, too. So all we know is that the president removes her from this job. Right. And we know that the State Department said that they were under pressure from the president to remove her for more than a year earlier.

And what happens after she's removed from this job? than a year earlier. And what happens after she's removed from this job? So about two months after she's removed from the job, the president and Zelensky, the new Ukrainian president, have this now famous phone call, July 25th, and she comes up. Yes. And the president says 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 wanted to let you know that. And then Zelensky agrees with Trump and says, it was great that you were the first one who told me she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100 percent. And then President Trump says, well, she's going to go through some things, which sounds quite ominous. So whether the fact that the president got rid of the ambassador to Ukraine before turning up the pressure on Ukraine is kind of an open question.

It is an open question. But it happened two months before this pivotal phone call. Right. Which makes you wonder, was somebody trying to get her out of the way? We just don't know. Right. She doesn't know, I don't think. So that Zelensky-Trump telephone call, of course,

has led to the impeachment inquiry. Where has Yovanovitch fit in to the inquiry? So she's going to be at the top of the witness list, right? But the question is, she is still a career official within the State Department. Because she's fired from her job but not from the department. Right. So she's

just lying low and then her name shows up on the witness list. And the House impeachment investigators really want to get her in there and find out what happened. But the White House comes out with its letter saying, we're not cooperating. The administration is not cooperating. So we're all wondering, is she going to show up or she's not going to show up? Does that apply to her?

Yeah. No, it definitely applies to her. If the administration is not cooperating, she shouldn't be cooperating, right? So we're, most of us, I think, are figuring she's not going to show up, right? She's been told not to show up. And then we learn, you know, not too many hours before her testimony that she is showing up. She's showing up and she walks through the entrance, you know, rather firmly, flanked by her lawyer, and she disappears into the secure chambers where the House Intelligence Committee investigators begin to question her, and she doesn't come out until dark.

She testified for nearly nine hours in defiance of the White House directive. And what do we know about what she says? We got her opening statement, and it was, I thought, extremely dramatic. I was particularly struck by this one sentence that she wrote, which was, although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the president, I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives. All these things that have been swirling around about me are completely false. The notion I ever said,

you know, ignore President Trump's orders because he's going to be impeached anyway. I never said such a thing to my embassy colleagues or to anyone else. And then she gets to Giuliani, who she says she thinks she's met maybe three times. Okay, I do not know Mr. Giuliani's motives for attacking me, but individuals, people named as his associates, may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were being stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine. In other words, maybe Giuliani's friends thought that I was standing in the way of them putting money in their pocket. Maybe that's what it is about. And she says more broadly that the U.S. foreign policy is going to be in a really bad state if we allow private interests to circumvent professional diplomats for their own gain, not the public good. So she's making a very, very, you know, important and broad point about this is that this is not just about me. It's chaos in the diplomatic scene. You have an ambassador

who the State Department doesn't have her back, right? And she's being discredited by the president's own personal lawyer and then later by the president himself in this phone call with the Ukrainian president. And that's not just a, you know, cautionary tale about her. That's a tale for a lot of diplomats who put themselves in harm's way to serve the nation, as she says. So she doesn't mention Mike Pompeo by name, but it's clear that she feels that the State Department didn't stand up for her and should have. She's raising serious issues there, but they're not really political issues. They're issues of, you know, good governance and good administration. But to many people listening, her removal from this position as ambassador is providing a lot

of ammunition to what has become a pretty political matter, which is the impeachment inquiry. Right. So the question about how did she lose her job? Why did she lose her job? Who drove her out? This is really central to the inquiry. And even if she didn't provide the answers because maybe she doesn't really know, other people are going to be asked about it. maybe she doesn't really know. Other people are going to be asked about it. And beyond the issue of what she does know or doesn't know, did say or didn't say, just the fact that she showed up alone is significant, really remarkable. And testified. And testified, right. Are more people like her going to follow suit? Are they going to say, you know, we don't care what the White House says. We're making our own decision. And one example of that

is Gordon Sondland, who is the U.S. ambassador for the European Union. First, he was going to testify. Then the White House, the State Department directed him not to testify. So he was taking off the schedule. Now he's back on the schedule because he wants to testify for his own reasons, which are probably that he doesn't want to be painted as the bad guy in this. So he's worried about his own reputation. I'm curious what's happened to all of the people who worked so hard to discredit Yovanovitch and ended up getting her removed from this job. What has happened to them?

Parnas and Fruman were arrested around 6 p.m. last night at Dulles Airport as they were about to board an international flight with one-way tickets. So the two associates of Rudy Giuliani, they were arrested for campaign finance violations, including in part for their contribution to Pete Sessions, which was allegedly in return for his help in getting the ambassador out. They're sitting in the Alexandria detention center now. They're in jail.

They're in jail. Tonight, both Karen and I address you with great thoughts of not just thanks, but great thoughts of how important these 22 years have been. Sessions lost his reelection, and he is concerned that his political career has been seriously harmed by these allegations. Giuliani. Well, I don't know. I haven't spoken to Rudy. I spoke to him yesterday briefly. He's a very good attorney, and he has been my attorney. Is now under investigation himself for whether he was acting as a foreign agent for the Ukraine in his efforts to oust the ambassador. And of course, the president is being investigated in an impeachment inquiry.

Right. Some people who went after her are going through some things. are going through some things. Sharon, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. The Times reports that in closed-door testimony on Monday, President Trump's former top advisor on Russia, Fiona Hill, testified that she strongly objected to the removal of Marie Yovanovitch

as ambassador to Ukraine, but that her advice was ignored. Hill recounted that Rudy Giuliani's conduct was so alarming that National Security Advisor John Bolton told her to alert White House lawyers about it, and that Bolton described Giuliani as, quote, a hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up. Despite objections from the White House, the leaders of the impeachment inquiry are scheduled

to hear from several more State Department officials over the coming days, including the former senior advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, and the ambassador to the European Union, who became deeply involved in the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump's rivals. We'll be right back. So do you think that he's, like, busy? I don't know. We'll have to see. Oh, my God. He might be gone.

Hey, Rebecca. How are you? Nice to see you. How you been? I'm good. How on deadline are you? Right now? Not really. Give me a here's what else you need to know today. Here's what else you need to know today. Here's what else you need to know today. Okay, Eric Schmidt, can I just ask you about what happened in Syria on Monday? So three main things happened in Syria on Monday.

The first is the Turkish offensive continued, continued deeper into Syrian territory. to Syrian territory. The second thing that happened was that the Syrian Kurds, who had been allied with the Americans, they had cut a deal with a new partner, President Assad, the Syrian government. And so Syrian government troops started moving into the territory that the Kurds used to hold. In response to all this, the president announced that there would be sanctions forthcoming if Turkey moved forward with these actions. The

United States finally acts and that the president announces there'll be economic sanctions against Turkey for what it's done. So effective immediately, we have sanctioned three of the ministers, the minister of defense, the minister of interior, and the minister of energy. But American officials I talked to today, particularly military officers who have served over in northeast Syria, said it's too little, too late. Sanctions at this point doesn't matter. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people will be displaced. ISIS fighters are breaking out of jails left and right. And all this has happened just a little over the last week.

President Trump made it very clear that the United States is going to continue to take actions against Turkey's economy until they bring the violence to an end. We want an immediate ceasefire, and we want to begin negotiations between Turkey and Syrian defense forces. We have great concerns about civilian populations. From the Washington Bureau of the Times, that's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. Let's get dinner. Let's get dinner. Night night.