Marie Yovanovitch knocked down the false claims peddled by The Hill's John Solomon that underpinned President Donald Trump's smear campaign against her.
The website published a Solomon interview in March with Yuriy Vitaliyovych, now the former prosecutor general in Ukraine, who said the then-ambassador had given him a “do not prosecute” list -- a claim pushed by the president, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Fox News broadcasters.
Yovanovitch and the State Department denied the allegation at the time, and she flatly -- and repeatedly -- denied The Hill's reporting as inaccurate during her testimony before the House impeachment inquiry, and told lawmakers why they were so damaging.
"I was worried," she said. "These attacks were, you know, being repeated by the president himself and his son."
Vitaliyovych himself later recanted those allegations, which House Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman pointed out during the former ambassador's testimony -- and Yovanovitch said Solomon's inaccurate reporting on her work in Ukraine undermined her credibility.
"It seemed to me that if the president's son is saying things like that, that it would be very hard to condition in my position and have authority in Ukraine unless the State Department came out pretty strongly behind me," she said.
However, she told lawmakers, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not issue a statement of support, which she asked him do.
"I was told that there was a concern on the seventh floor that if a statement of support was issued, whether by the State Department or by the secretary personally, that it could be undermined," Yovanovitch testified, "that the president might issue a tweet contradicting that or something to that effect."
