US ambassador pressed Ukraine corruption fight before ouster

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Months before the call that set off an impeachment inquiry, many in the diplomatic community were alarmed by the Trump administration’s abrupt removal of a career diplomat from her post as ambassador to Ukraine.

The ambassador’s ouster, and the campaign against her that preceded it, are now emerging as a key sequence of events behind a whistleblower’s complaint alleging that the president pressured a foreign country to investigate his political rival.

In a letter Friday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sen. Robert Menendez demanded answers about the ouster of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.


“Why was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine recalled in May 2019?” the Democratic senator wrote in a list of questions about what he called the “perversion of U.S. foreign policy” outlined by the whistleblower. “Did you approve that decision?”

Yovanovitch is one of five State Department officials who are to be deposed by the House intelligence, foreign affairs and oversight committees about the whistleblower’s complaint. The committees also issued a subpoena for documents from Pompeo.

In addition to Yovanovitch, those to be deposed include former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Volker resigned from the envoy position Friday.

The removal of Yovanovitch gained little attention at the time it occurred, when many in Washington were preoccupied with escalating tensions with Iran. State Department officials said she was merely ending her term a few months ahead of a departure that had been scheduled for July. She kept quiet and moved back to Washington, remaining a diplomat but with a university fellowship and no fixed State Department assignment.

https://www.apnews.com/16e6c724d3ee40cea4ff82ab5efa7ed6