Trump Again Attacks Former Ukraine Ambassador: ‘This Was Not an Angel’

By Gene Maddaus

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – President Trump renewed his attacks on Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, during a lengthy phone interview on “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning.

Trump had been accused of witness intimidation when he tweeted an insult of Yovanovitch while she was testifying to the House Intelligence Committee last week. In the interview Friday morning, he called Yovanovitch an “Obama person,” and accused her of failing to put up his picture in the U.S. embassy in Kiev for a year and a half to two years after his election.

“This was not an angel, this woman, OK?” he said. “And there are a lot of things that she did that I didn’t like. And we will talk about that at some time. But I just want to let you know, this was not a baby that we’re dealing with.”

Yovanovitch’s attorneys denied the charge about the president’s photo. “The Embassy in Kiev hung the official photographs of the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State as soon as they arrived from Washington, DC,” her attorneys said, according to a NBC News tweet.

Trump also lashed out at Adam Schiff, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, said he welcomed an impeachment trial, and reiterated the debunked conspiracy theory that CrowdStrike — a California cyber security firm — has the Democratic National Committee’s server.

“They gave the server to CrowdStrike or whatever it’s called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian,” he said. “And I still want to see that server.”

CrowdStrike is partly owned by a U.S. citizen who was born in Russia. It has no Ukrainian owners. CrowdStrike has previously explained that it has provided all the evidence requested by the FBI, and has never taken possession of a server.