Democrats. Today, a third career diplomat will testify, Marie Yovanovitch who was fired from her po ambassador of the ukraine. She was fired in may. I want to bring in mary bruce on capitol hill. Shes going to say that President Trump fired her after what she called a Smear Campaign from Rudy Giuliani. Reporter george, Marie Yovanovitch says she was fired from her job for essentially doing her job. Saying the president lost confidence in her, and now she will have a chance before the American People to tell her side of the story. She said she was blindsided when she was forced out of more than three decades of public service, and she was shocked and even felt threatened when the president said she was bad news. Democrats will argue shes the first victim of the president s shadow diplomacy in ukraine. They are going to use the ambassador to try and put a personal face to their argument. They will say that she was forced out for standing in the way of the politically motivated investigations that the president s allies were pushing for. On the other hand, the republicans will say the president can have whoever he wants on his team, and whoever represents the interests of the United States abroad. Jon karl, all through the hearing, the president said he didnt watch, and his campaign went after the two witnesses, unelected bureaucrats. What do we expect on yovanovitch . Reporter i expect they will make a couple of points over and over again, george. First of all, that yovanovitch is somebody who was not even in her position when all of this went down, that she is irrelevant to these proceedings. She was removed as ambassador before the famous phone call in july between the president and president zelensky, and she was not there when the president directed that aid be withheld. They will say she is irrelevant, and whether or not you agree with the president s decision to remove her, republicans will say he has the right to decide who represents him and the United States in ukraine, and every other country. Okay, jon. Thanks. We have a team here in the studio including david muir, and the world not only having this public hearing, but theyre following the news from wednesday, the revelation that someone else had heard a phone call between President Trump and ambassador sondland. That witness will appear behind closed doors. His name is david holmes, and all of this testimony has been hearsay, but david holmes is the state Department Staffer in the ukraine. He said he could hear President Trump through that phone the day after the infamous phone call between President Trump and the president of ukraine. This was a phone call between the president and ambassador sondland, of course, attached to the eu, but who was the president s point man it would appear if this testimony is to be believed all week. David holmes will talk about what has he heard, and in another sign of a willingness to break ranks. Tomorrow, the omb staffer he is willing to testify under subpoena, george. This will be the first person from omb, the budget office, learning about the directive when it came in, and why they wanted to withhold aid. Theyre getting closer and closer to the president. We have our legal team here as well. Chief legal analyst dan abrams, and kate shaw. Also, a new member of our team, alyssa murray, constitutional law professor at nyu. Dan, ill begin with you. We heard mary outline it from the democrats, they will make ambassador yovanovitchs relevance, should she have left before the conversation with president zelensky. Right, and i think the key here is for her to describe a culture of corruption. Meaning we keep talking about how the goal was to clean up corruption in the ukraine, and we may get from her how corrupt the United States in effect was being, meaning giuliani and its allies and how she was trying. She was known as sort of the anticorruption person there, that she was trying to get things cleaned up, and instead of being able to execute on that, that she was getting an enormous amount of pushback from giuliani and his two allies and i think that is going to be important for setting the stage, telling the story about what was happening in ukraine, and that then leads into the phone call with zelensky, et cetera. We will hear what jon karl said. The president has a right to replace any ambassador he wants to replace, and they will try to focus in on the president s state of mind in establishing ambassador yovanovitch who was fighting corruption. Again, the whole thing she has to bring out in her testimony was she was an impediment to the president s goals and actual motivation, and the removal was a Smear Campaign alleged against her as an aat thatoimove her. Yovanovitch take her place. Kate shaw, Something Else that is unmistakable among the other three witnesses, they will try bout her life story as well. Right. You saw her Opening Statement in her closed door testimony, talking about the oath she has taken to defend the constitution and the laws of the United States. Kent and taylor underscored that, and theyre not a personal, political agenda of one president , but the United States, its laws, its constitution. I think thats what well see today. Lets go to the room. Ambassador yovanovitch has taken her seat. She will be sworn in by adam schiff, and well have the Opening Statements by both the chairman and devin nunes. I expect an Opening Statement from ambassador yovanovitch as well. Shell. She still works for the state department. She has actually been detailed to Georgetown University where shes teaching of course. One of the other things expected to be elis tipped is she expected to be fired. She was told to return to the United States on the next plane. Lets listen to the committee room. The committee will come to order. Good morning, everyone. This is the second in a series of public hearings the committee will be holding as part oth houses pehment inquirthe chair. I will make an Opening Statement, and then Ranking Member nunes will have an opportunity to make a statement. Then we will turn to our witness for an Opening Statement, and then to questions. For audience members, we welcome you and respect your interest in being here. In turn, we ask for your respect as we proceed with todays hearing. It is the intention of the committee to proceed without disruptions. I will take all necessary and appropriate steps to maintain order to ensure that the committee is run with accordance with house rules. With now i now recognize myself to give an Opening Statement in the impeachment inquiry to donald j. Trump, the 45 president of the United States. Ambassador yovanovitch was told to get on the next plane back to washington. Upon her return to d. C. , she was informed by her superiors that al shthough she had done nothin wrong, she could no longer serve as ambassador to ukraine because she did not have the confidence of the president. It was a stunning turn of events for this highly regarded career diplomat who had done such a remarkable job fighting corruption in ukraine that a short time earlier she had been asked by the state department to extend her tour. Ambassador yovanovitch has been in the Foreign Service for 33 years, and served much of that time in the former soviet union. Her parents had fled stalin and later hitler before settling in the United States. She is an exemplary officer who is widely praised and respected by her colleagues. She is known as an anticorruption champion whose tour in kiev was viewed as very successful. Ambassador Michael Mckinnely who served her in the former service for decades stated that from the earliest days of her career in the Foreign Service, she was excellent, serious, committed. I certainly remember her being one of those people who seemed to be destined for greater things. Her successor is acting chief in mission bill taylor, describing her as very frank. She was very direct. She made points very clearly, and she was indeed tough on corruption, and she named names. That sometimes is controversial outthe out there, but shes a strong person and made those charges. In her time in kyiv, ambassador yovanovitch was tough on corruption. Too tough on corruption for some, and her principle stance made her enemies. As george kent told this committee on wednesday, you cant promote principle to anticorruption action without pissing off corrupt people. And ambassador yovanovitch did not just piss off corrupt ukrainians like lutsenko, but also certain americans like rudy giulia giuliani, Donald Trumps personal attorney, and two individuals now indicted who worked with him, igor fruman and lev parnas. Others who would come to include the president s own son, don junior, promoted a Smear Campaign against her based on false allegations. At the state department, there was an effort to push back to obtain a statement of support from secretary pompeo, but those efforts failed when it became clear that President Trump wanted her gone. Some have argued that a president has the ability to nominate or remove any ambassador he wants, that they serve at the pleasure of the president , and that is true. The question before us is not whether or not donald trump could recall a foreign ambassador with a stellar reputation for fighting corruption in ukraine, but why would he want to . Why did Rudy Giuliani want her gone, and why did donald trump . And why would donald trump instruct the new team he put in place, the three amigos, gordon sondland, rick perry and kurt volker to work with the same man, Rudy Giuliani, to play such a role in the Smear Campaign against her . It is because of the desire to investigate the bidens, as well as the interference into the 2016 election. As he said in an interview, were not meddling in an election. Were meddling in an investigation which we have a right to do. He told cnns chris cuomo, of course, i did when asked if he had pressed ukraine to investigate joe biden. He has never been shy about who he is doing this work for, his climate, the president. One powerful ally giuliani had in ukraine to promote these investigations was lutsenko, the corrupt former prosecutor general. In one powerful adversary lutsenko had was an ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. In the call with zelensky, trump brings up a ukrainian prosecutor and praises him against all evidence trump claims this former prosecutor general was very good, and he was shut down, and thats really unfair. But the woman known for fighting corruption, his own former ambassador, the woman ruthlessly smeared and driven from her post, the president does nothing but disparage, or worse, threaten. Well, shes going to go through some things, the president declar declares. That tells you a lot about the president s priorities and intentions. Getting rid of ambassador yovanovitch helped set the stage for an irregular channel that could pursue the two investigations that mattered so much to the president , the 2016 conspiracy theory, and most important, an investigation into the 2020 political opponent he apparently feared most, joe biden. And the president s scheme might have worked but for the fact that the man who would succeed ambassador yovanovitch who we heard from on wednesday, acting ambassador taylor, would eventually discover the effort to press ukraine into conducting these investigations and would push back. But for the fact also that someone blew the whistle. Ambassador yovanovitch was serving our nations interest and fighting corruption in ukraine, but she was considered an obstacle to the the president s political agenda. For that, she was smeared and cast aside. The powers of the presidency are immense, but they are not absolute, and they cannot be used for corrupt purpose. The American People expect their president to use the authority they grant him in the service of the nation, not to destroy others to advance his personal or political interests. I now recognize Ranking Member nunes for his remarks. I thank the gentleman. Its unfortunate that today and for most of next week we will continue engaging in the democrats daylong tv specta e spectacles instead of solving the problems we were all sent to washington to address. We now have a major trade agreement with canada and mexico ready for approval, a deal that would create jobs and boost our economy. Meanwhile, we have not yet approved funding for the government which expires next week along with funding for our men and women in uniform. Instead, the democrats have convened us once again to advance their operation to topple a dually elected president. Well note that five, five democrats on this committee had already voted to impeach this president before the trump zelensky phone call occurred. In fact, democrats have been vowing to oust President Trump since the day he was elected. So americans can rightly suspect that his phone call with president zelensky was used as an excuse for the democrats to fulfill their watergate fantasies. But im glad that on wednesday after the democrats staged six weeks of secret depositions in the basement of the capitol like some kind of strange cult, the American People finally got to see this farce for themselves. They saw a sit through hours of hearsay testimony about conversations that two diplomats that had never spoken to the president heard secondhand, thirdhand and fourthhand from other people. In other words, rumors. The problem of trying to overthrow a president based on this type of evidence is obvious, but thats what their whole case beginning with secondhand and thirdhand information cited by the whistleblower. Thats why on wednesday, the democrats were forced to make the absurd argument that hearsay can be much better evidence than direct evidence. Just when you thought the spectacle couldnt get more bizarre, Committee Republicans received a memo from the democrats threatening ethics referrals if we out the whistleblower. As the democrats are well aware, no republicans here know the whistleblowers identity because the whistleblower only met with democrats, not with republicans. Chairman schiff claimed not to know who it is. Yet he also vowed to block us from asking questions that could reveal his or her identity. Republicans on this committee are left wondering how its even possible for the chairman to block questions about a person whose identity he claims not to know. The American People may be seeing this absurdities for the first time, but republicans on this dooais are used to them. Until they secretly met with the whistleblower, the democrats have shown any interest in the last three years, on any topic except for the conspiracy theories that President Trump is a russian agent. When you find yourself on the phone like the democrats did with russian pranksters offering you nude pictures of trump and afterward, you order your staff to follow up and get the fphoto as the democrats also did, then it might be time to ask yourself if you have gone out too far on a limb. Even as they were accusing republicans including with russians, the democrats themselves were colluding with russians by funding the steel dossier which was based on russian and ukrainian sources. Meanwhile, they turn a blind eye to ukrainians meddling in our elections because democrats were cooperating with that operation. This was the subject of a july 20, 2017 letter sent by senator gra grassley to thendeputy attorney general, rod rosen stistein. The letter raised concerns about chalupa, a contractor for the Democratic National committee who worked to spread dirt on the Trump Campaign. As senator grassley wrote, chalupa quote, chalupas actions appear to show she was simultaneously working on behalf of a foreign government, ukraine, anden on behalf of th dnc campaign in an effort to influence not only the u. S. Voting population, but u. S. Government officials, unquote. After touting the steel dossier and defending the fbis russia investigation, which are now being investigated by Inspector General horowitz and attorney general barr, democrats on this committee ignore ukrainian election meddling even though chalupa publicly admitted to the democrats scheme. Likewise, they are blind to the blaring signs of corruption, surrounding Hunter Bidens wellpaid position on the board of a corruption Ukrainian Company while his father served as Vice President and point man for ukraine issues in the Obama Administration. But the democrats media hacks only cared about that issue briefly. When they were trying to stop joe biden from running against Hillary Clinton in 2015. As i previously stated, these hearings should not be occurring at all until we get the answers to three crucial questions the democrats refuse to ask. First, what is the full extent of the democrats prior coordina