After testifying against President Trump in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch has been rewarded with a prestigious diplomacy award from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) at Georgetown University.
Yovanovitch became a Senior State Department Fellow at ISD in the spring of 2019. Now she’s receiving the J. Raymond “Jit” Trainor Award for Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy there, investigative journalist Sara Carter reported.
The ceremony will be “moderated by former Deputy Secretary of State Ambassador William J. Burns, who is now the President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,” Carter reported.
At the urging of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, President Trump recalled Yovanovitch in May of 2019. “I forced her out because she’s corrupt,” Giuliani bluntly told Fox News host Laura Ingraham back in December. “I came back with a document that will show unequivocally that she committed perjury,” he added.
The longtime diplomat retired from the State Department a few weeks ago, but could remain on the payroll for months, according to Fox, because she was assigned to Georgetown University through the Department.
During her testimony in the second hearing in the House impeachment inquiry, Yovanovitch stated that she “shocked and devastated” when she first read the memorandum of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump had told Zelensky that she was “going through some stuff,” which deeply troubled the former ambassador.
“A person who saw me actually reading the transcript said the color drained from my face,” Yovanovitch recalled.
In 2016, the Ukraine ambassador to the U.S. wrote a an anti-Trump oped in the Hill, criticizing him for his stance on Russia and Crimea.
Trump’s impeachment defense team argued that the op-ed showed that Ukrainian officials supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. Additionally, they said the ambassador had “said some nasty things” about Trump in the op-ed and on Twitter.
Yovanovitch recently wrote another opinion piece—this time for The Washington Post—stating that she had “no regrets” about her decision to testify.
“When civil servants in the current administration saw senior officials taking actions they considered deeply wrong in regard to the nation of Ukraine, they refused to take part,” Yovanovitch wrote. “When Congress asked us to testify about those activities, my colleagues and I did not hesitate, even in the face of administration efforts to silence us.”
She added: “because it is the American way to speak up about wrongdoing. I have seen dictatorships around the world, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death.”
Giuliani, however, has argued in interview after interview that Yovanovitch is hardly an innocent nonpartisan professional she pretends to be.
“There are at least five Ukrainian officials who are willing to testify against her, not anonymously, like their whistleblower, not hearsay, like their first two witnesses — this may be hard for Adam Schiff to take — but they would actually give real testimony. And what they would say basically is that she was very, very pro-Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election,” Giuliani told One America News in November.
“There are five witnesses who say that she instructed the prosecutor general of the Ukraine to dismiss four cases,” he added. “Two of those cases involved Ukrainian collusion with Democrats to hurt Donald Trump. One of them involved a company owned by George Soros. There are five witnesses who are willing to testify to that. None of them were called. None of them were interviewed.”
In December, Giuliani told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk that “Saint” Yovanovitch “quashed” a corruption investigation into the disappearance of foreign aid because the Obama Administration was funneling the money to non-governmental organizations run by Soros.
Giuliani told Kirk that in 2017, the Ukrainian Accounting Authority did a study which revealed that $5.3 billion in foreign aid during the Obama/Biden years was not properly accounted for. So the agency started an investigation.
“All of a sudden, members of the U.S. Embassy, under the control of Marie Yovanovitch—I call her Saint Marie Yovanovitch—comes and tells them, ‘there’s no need to do that. We’re okay with the spending. There’s no need to,’” he said.
In another highly partisan and possible illegal move, Yovanovitch, while ambassador of Ukraine, allegedly ordered subordinates to monitor prominent conservative figures, journalists and persons with ties to President Donald Trump.
Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch obtained information in October indicating that Yovanovitch ordered embassy staffers in Ukraine to target certain U.S. persons online using the following search terms: “Biden, Giuliani, Soros and Yovanovitch.”
According to Judicial Watch, she had created a list of individuals who were to be monitored via social media and other means, and Ukraine embassy staff submitted the request to the Washington D.C. headquarters office of the department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs.After several days, the bureau got back to Yovanovitch’s staff, informing them that the request was illegal.
“This is not an obscure rule, everyone in public diplomacy or public affairs knows they can’t make lists and monitor U.S. citizens unless there is a major national security reason,” a senior State Department official told Judicial Watch.
The conservative figures allegedly unlawfully monitored by the State Department in Ukraine at the request of Yovanovitch include:
“No wonder both @realDonaldTrump and President Zelensky of Ukraine agreed Ambassador Yonacovitch was a real problem,” Giuliani wrote on Twitter on Oct. 14. “I wonder if Shiftless asked her about this? Will there be an investigation or is she another “Protected Person” like Biden & Hillary.”
Judicial Watch in January filed two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the “State Department for documents tied to the alleged monitoring of President Trump’s family, lawyer, and journalists,” as ordered by Yovanovitch.
Attorney General this week confirmed that the Justice Department is reviewing information supplied by Giuliani about Ukraine corruption. The review is reportedly being handled by Scott Brady, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.