this ambassador. and remember, you know, donald trump doesn t president trump doesn t seem to know many of his ambassadors. we ve just learn a few weeks ago he barely knows ambassador sondland. this notion that somehow her performance in ukraine was wrong and that he was going to get into the weeds of that to underscore, incredibly unprecedented for somebody to be removed in midterm in their career midterm in their assignment, i mean. you know, let s be clear, this was to do with the drug deal. and i think we need to keep getting back to that and not getting too distracted in the smearing was bad, but it was for a reason. we need to keep asking why was yovanovitch removed. it s because she was trying to block this alternative thing to help the president be re-elected. a perfect summary. ambassador yovanovitch is back. let s listen in. we ll return to order. mr. jordan, you re recognized for five minutes. thank you, mr. chairman. ambassador, thank you for being here. thank y
but what i would say is you ve listed a number of actions. i think from my point of view, that doesn t that doesn t create a ukrainian government strategy to interfere in our elections. i didn t say that. mr. jordan, please allow the ambassador to answer the question. so i would just say that, you know, u.s. politicians will often criticize policies of foreign foreign counterparts. even perhaps during their elections. you know, this this happens in politics and i think that it it doesn t necessarily constitute interference. would you ever write an op-ed jordan, your time s expired. jordan. jordan, your time has expired. mr. welch, you re recognized. thank you, mr. chairman. i h i d like everybody here, i m extraordinarily grateful to you
issue. it didn t appear to me. and so i asked ambassador sondland who said that he, you know, he was a political appointee, he said he was close to the president. and so he had just been in ukraine for a ship visit with some of his eu colleagues from brussels. and so i reached out to him for advice. when this was no longer a ukraine kind of an interview with mr. lutsenko, it became american politicians and pundits, et cetera, were repeating those allegations, i asked him for advice. it meant a lot to you. this is an extraordinary time. the advice meant a lot, and what was what was his advice? he suggested that i needed to go big or go home, and he said
into adam schiff over and over again, to take on the whistle-blower, take on other procedural things, it would appear that there s some rumor that there s a primetime slot open at fox. yeah. that s what it felt like. but it also felt like this witness did so well this morning, and then for the president to do what he did, that these members knew that there was a little cleanup on aisle five they needed to do. so you saw republicans spending five minutes just complimenting the witness. and then they pivoted to this bogus claim about how if we could only learn the identity of the whistle-blower this all would go away. well, you know, we ve all given the analogy over and over again, all of us that have been prosecutors, when someone calls the tip line and tells you there s going to be an armed robbery down the road, the police go investigate the armed robbery. and even if the guy doesn t get away with the money, they continue to investigate it. and nobody is focused on the