Liked on YouTube: Yovanovitch: State Department 'is in trouble'

Yovanovitch: State Department 'is in trouble'

(13 Feb 2020) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus130933 A recently retired U.S. diplomat whose abrupt removal by President Donald Trump from her post as ambassador to Ukraine became a focus of the impeachment hearings delivered a rebuke to the Trump administration, saying "truth matters," and the State Department "is being hollowed out." Marie Yovanovitch accepted the Trainor Award from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University in a ceremony Wednesday, making her first public appearance since testifying before Congress in the impeachment proceedings. "The State Department is in trouble. Senior leaders lack policy vision, moral clarity and leadership skills," Yovanovitch said. "Vacancies at all levels go unfilled and officers are increasingly wondering whether it is safe to express concerns about policy, even behind closed doors." Yovanovitch, who was removed from her post in May 2019 with no public explanation, testified to Congress that she had pressed the Ukrainian government to address long-standing U.S. concerns about corruption and described a "concerted campaign" against her based on "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives." Trump publicly criticized her as she testified, saying on Twitter that "everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad." In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post she called it an honor to represent the United States as an immigrant to the country and defended her decision, and that of other senior officials, to speak up to Congress about what they saw as wrongdoing by the administration. "Our military colleagues warn consistently that the more we cut the international affairs budget, the higher the risk for longer and deadlier military operations," she said. "When another agency is seeking funding for your agency, you know there's something going on." Find out more about AP Archive: https://ift.tt/1CUvJt1 Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://ift.tt/2mlr9BZ Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/102011028589719587178/+APArchive​ Tumblr: https://aparchives.tumblr.com/​​ Instagram: https://ift.tt/2G5Qog8 You can license this story through AP Archive: https://ift.tt/37jHppf
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