Marie Yovanovitch Attacked Her Critics Head-on

Marie Yovanovitch

Any experienced teacher can tell you that it is harder to get students to unlearn bad information then it is for students to learn new information. The bad information – the mind gremlins – block out knowledge and insight. It is more important to make your own case then it is to refute objections. However, if bad ideas have planted themselves into the audience’s minds, a speaker must address them directly. Debaters call this pre-empting objections.

Former United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s opening statement to a group of congressional committees yesterday specifically refuted several unsupported accusations and conspiracy theories that conservatives have made against her. Her positive points, that democracy and opposition to corruption are important, were the most important. However, no less a personage than the president of the United States had been smearing her and she confronted the smears directly. The underlying issue is that President Trump wanted Ukraine to prove that Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, was corrupt.

Yovanovitch began by making a general point: “I want to categorically state that I have never myself or through others, directly or indirectly, ever directed, suggested, or in any other way asked for any government or government official in Ukraine (or elsewhere) to refrain from investigating or prosecuting actual corruption.” She cited her Ukrainian critic, former Prosecutor General Lutsenko, who had withdrawn his accusations against her, to prove her point. She denied being disloyal to President Donald Trump. She also denied that the Obama administration asked her for help in the 2016 campaign and stressed that she would not have done so even if asked.

Continuing, she said that she had never met Hunter Biden, whose actions are at the center of Republican conspiracy theories, while also denying any political conversations with Vice President Biden. She lashed out at Rudy Giuliani, stressing that, “I do not know Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me. But individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.” Ouch!

Yovanovitch said that her supervisor, the Deputy Secretary of State, told her that there had been a concerted campaign against her and that the president had wanted to remove her for some time: “He also said that I had done nothing wrong.”

Those last two points not only attacked her critics, but, more importantly, set the stage to turn the tables and investigate them. Very clever. Giuliani is already facing criminal inquiries. It will be interesting to hear what the Deputy Secretary of State has to say.

Finally, Yovanovitch expressed that she was “incredulous that the U. S. government chose to remove an Ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”

That was an important point. "Unfounded and false claims." Conspiracy theories have dominated American politics for too long. Indeed, many of the things we call conspiracy theories hardly rise above the level of wild accusations. Partisan people believe them without evidence only because they want to believe them. It was refreshing to hear Yovanovitch strike back against the falsehoods. I can pretty much guarantee that conspiracy theorists will come up with new accusations against her, while the old ones will continue to circulate. That doesn’t mean that Yovanovitch wasted her time, just that falsehood will play whenever its turn comes up.

Yovanovitch met her critics head-on. That’s the only way to do it. Emotions are running too high for halfway arguments to do any good. Her refutations were clear and specific. She did not wander around the issues, as political people often do, but instead attacked her critics directly. She gave details and her denials were clear-cut. Some of the accusations against her are of the “he said-she said” variety, and those could linger. She gave evidence against other smears. Those will still linger, since people who want to believe falsehoods willingly believe falsehoods even after they are proven wrong.

This is also why she spent so much time establishing her credibility as a faithful, nonpartisan public servant. I wrote about that yesterday. Persuasion often comes down to deciding who you believe.

Of course, millions of people will never believe Yovanovitch because she said things that they don’t want to believe. Mind gremlins at work! But let’s remember the burden of proof: people who make vicious accusations against Yovanovitch are obligated to prove them. They haven’t. So why should they expect her to refute their unproven, unsupported, and implausible accusations?

Social media are emphasizing that Yovanovitch had the courage to defy attempts to silence her. She spoke out to defend herself when so many of President Trump’s targets meekly fall into line behind him. Sometimes one courageous speaker is all it takes to open the floodgates of truth. 

Image: United States Department of State