Latest On Trump Impeachment Hearings: Marie Yovanovitch Says She Felt Threatened And Intimidated By The President

President Trump railed against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and the second day of House impeachment hearings Friday, attacking the veteran State Department employee, blaming her for the political situation in Somalia and other countries in which she served.

Yovanovitch testified she felt threatened and intimidated by the president’s remarks.

Trump also attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “who should be home cleaning up the dangerous and disgusting slum she is making of her district in San Francisco.”

Yovanovitch said she was “shocked and devastated” when she learned Trump described her as “bad news” to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 phone call during which he asked his Ukranian counterpart to investigate his political rivals.

“Words fail me,” Yovanovitch said. She said as she read the transcript of the call and "color trained from my face" as she read that Trump said she would be “going through some things.”

Yovanovitch said she was undermined by false accusations that she had supplied the Ukraine’s public prosecutors’ office a do-not-prosecute list by the corrupt prosecutor she had worked to remove from office. Yovanovitch said it was “disappointing” and “concerning” that Trump’s opinion of her and the situation in Ukraine was not “based on anything the State Department would have reported or anyone else in the U.S. government.”

Instead, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associates reportedly fed Trump information from corrupt forces in Ukraine who wanted her removed because of her efforts in the former Soviet republic.

“I mean, after 33 years of service to our country it was terrible. It's not the way I wanted my career to end,” Yovanovitch said of her firing.

She asked: "How is it that foreign corrupt interests can manipulate our government?"

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., read a tweet Trump sent into the record during the proceedings and asked Yovanovitch how it made her feel. She said she felt intimidated.

“It’s very intimidating. … The effect is to be intimidated,” she said.

Schiff said the committee takes witness intimidation seriously, possibly opening another angle in the impeachment process.

“Some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously,” Schiff said.

Defending her record as a diplomat, Yovanovitch said she thinks “where I’ve served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better.” She noted Ukraine has made major progress in routing corruption and establishing a functioning democracy.

Shortly before the hearing began, Trump released the rough transcript of an April phone call with Zelensky during which the two exchanged pleasantries. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the ranking Republican on the Intelligence committee, read the document into the record.

It was a subsequent call on July 25 that triggered the impeachment investigation.