Trump denies witness tampering; State official says president asked about ‘investigation’ into Bidens

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) raised doubts about Yovanovitch’s commitment to the United States during an appearance on CNN late Friday, stating “that’s a tough question” when asked if there’s any question about the former U.S. ambassador’s loyalty to the country.

The House Republican made the remark in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo after noting Yovanovitch was born in Canada and has Ukrainian parents.

Yovanovitch was born in Canada to parents who fled the Soviet Union and moved to Connecticut as a child. The 33-year career diplomat has served presidents of both parties.

A White House readout of an April call between Trump and Zelensky that does not match the rough transcript released Friday was drafted before the call occurred and was never updated, according to a person briefed on the call.

The official readout — which said Trump “expressed his commitment” to work with the newly elected president to “strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption” — was based on talking points that the president did not follow, the person said.

After the call, the White House staff did not update the readout to reflect what Trump actually said — and what he left out, the person said.

David Holmes, a career diplomat, told lawmakers Friday that he overheard a phone call in Kyiv between President Trump and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, during which Trump pressed for updates on the Ukrainians’ willingness to conduct an “investigation,” a day after Trump had asked Ukraine’s president to launch probes into former vice president Joe Biden and his son as well a debunked theory about the 2016 election.

Details of the July 26 conversation were disclosed by Holmes in his opening statement to impeachment investigators, which was obtained by CNN.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said President Trump’s tweet attacking Yovanovitch was the “wrong thing” to do, adding, “he knows her strength and he was trying to undermine it.”

“Of course presidents appoint ambassadors,” Pelosi said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But people don’t insult people, especially when they’re giving testimony before the Congress of the United States. I think even his most ardent supporters have to honestly admit this was the wrong thing for the president to do.”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said David Holmes, a political counselor at the embassy in Kyiv, clearly overheard Trump talking to Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland about investigations of the Bidens.

“He has some specific quotes that leave no doubt about what the president of the United States was thinking,” Lieu said, adding that he would like to see Holmes testify in public.

Acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. revealed at a public hearing Wednesday that one of his aides overheard a phone call between Sondland and Trump in which they discussed the political investigations at the heart of the inquiry.

As the hearing unfolded, some of the president’s supporters sought to present a united front online, flooding social media with precise and coordinated messaging.

One line in particular gained traction on Twitter: “I hired Donald Trump to fire people like Yovanovitch.”

The statement gained about 12,600 interactions — meaning tweets, retweets, mentions and replies — during a roughly 2½-hour period on Friday morning, according to analysis conducted by Marc Owen Jones, a disinformation researcher and assistant professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar. It continued to spread through much of the afternoon, appearing on other major social media platforms, such as Facebook, as well as on Trump-friendly message boards on 4chan.

Addressing reporters after Friday’s public hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said she disagreed with Trump’s disparaging tweet about Yovanovitch, but added it does not amount to witness intimidation.

The focus, Stefanik said, should remain on impeachment, which is a “constitutional matter.”

“You can disagree or dislike the tweet, but we are here to talk about impeachment, and nothing in that room today and nothing in that room earlier this week — nothing rises to the level of impeachable offenses,” she said. “This is wishful political thinking by Democrats, this is not the first or last tweet they’re going to complain about.”

The White House displaced blame for the discrepancy in the official readout offered in April of Trump’s first conversation with Zelensky and the memorandum of the phone call released earlier Friday, saying it was the fault of National Security Council Ukraine expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.

“It is standard operating procedure for the National Security Council to provide readouts of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders. This one was prepared by the NSC’s Ukraine expert,” said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.