FACTBOX-Quotes from Trump impeachment hearing in U.S. House

The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee held its second public hearing on Friday in an impeachment inquiry examining President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine. The witness was Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Below are some quotations from Friday's hearing.

HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ADAM SCHIFF: Schiff, a Democrat, opened the impeachment hearing explaining how Yovanovitch was removed from her post earlier this year "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 been doing 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," he said. "In her time in Kyiv, Ambassador Yovanovitch was tough on corruption, too tough on corruption for some, and her principled stance made her enemies. As George Kent told this committee on Wednesday, 'you can't promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.'

"And Ambassador Yovanovitch did not just 'piss off' corrupt Ukrainians, like the corrupt former prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko, but also certain Americans like Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, and two individuals, now indicted, who worked with him, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. Lutsenko, Giuliani, Fruman, Parnas, and others who would come to include the president’s own son, Don Jr., promoted a smear campaign against her based on false allegations," Schiff said. "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 Donald Trump could recall an American 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?"

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