Trump tweeted during the hearing that Yovanovitch was essentially a terrible ambassador, and Schiff stopped the hearing to read Trump’s tweet to Yovanovitch and get her reaction.
First, here’s the tweets from Trump:
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
….They call it “serving at the pleasure of the President.” The U.S. now has a very strong and powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is called, quite simply, America First! With all of that, however, I have done FAR more for Ukraine than O.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
Schiff read the tweets aloud and is claiming that it’s witness intimidation “in real time”:
Watch: Adam Schiff on Trump's real-time tweet criticizing Yovanovitch.
"I want to let you know ambassador that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously."pic.twitter.com/umqZb6Snrj
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 15, 2019
Schiff: "We saw today witness intimidation in real time by the President of the United States."pic.twitter.com/iYQ52fN7Ig
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 15, 2019
But Mark Levin hits on the exact point I was thinking when I heard this go down…
1. I swear the media are not only vicious but they are nuts. But for the fact that Schiff read the presidents tweet to the witness during the course of the hearing, she would have not known about the tweet. How the hell is that witness tampering?
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) November 15, 2019
2. Furthermore, it clearly hasn’t changed the fact that the witness is testifying willingly and sticking to her script.
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) November 15, 2019
Yovanovitch wouldn’t have known about Trump’s tweets if Schiff hadn’t read them to her. You can say she might have learned about them some other way, later in the day, but we don’t know that for certain because Schiff is the one who told her about them. To call this witness intimidation is absurd.