FACTBOX-'Stunning turn of events: 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.

"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. "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 importantly, 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, whom we heard from on Wednesday, acting Ambassador Taylor, would eventually discover the effort to press Ukraine into conducting these investigations and would push back hard, but for the fact that someone blew the whistle," Schiff said.

"Ambassador Yovanovitch was serving our nation's interest in fighting corruption in Ukraine, but she was considered an obstacle to the furtherance of the President's personal and political agenda. For that, she was smeared and cast aside. The powers of the presidency are immense, but they are not absolute and cannot be used for a 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," Schiff said. HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE SENIOR REPUBLICAN DEVIN NUNES:

The top Republican on the committee, Devin Nunes, said Democrats had gone "too far" in their efforts to impeach Trump, castigating them for accusing the president of being a "Russian agent" and comparing them to "some kind of strange cult." "The American people finally got to see this farce for themselves," Nunes said of the impeachment inquiry. The testimony, he said had relied on rumors.

"The problem with trying to overthrow a president based on this type of evidence is obvious. But that's what their whole case relies on, beginning with secondhand and thirdhand information cited by the whistleblower."