President Trump opened himself up to a new line of attack from Democrats by vigorously criticizing the record of a former ambassador to Ukraine who he ousted earlier this year after she faced a smear campaign from his personal lawyer.
Trump took to Twitter on Friday morning to claim that “everywhere” U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch went “turned bad” and suggested she was to blame for the situation in Somalia, where she did her first tour. Yovanovitch was asked to react to the tweets during the hearing on Friday which was being carried live on air, and described them as “intimidating.”
The president’s tweet ran counter to a desire by Republicans to avoid attacking the character of career public servants like Yovanovitch, who boasts decades of service in the diplomatic corps in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
View the complete November 16 article by Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.
Former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig this week admitted he was stunned by President Donald Trump’s justification for blocking the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn — and he called the legal rationale behind it “nuts.”