Marie Yovanovitch

In light of the ongoing impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, I have been quite cynical in my assessment of what will come of all this.

"Ain't nothing gonna happen."

Even if Congress votes to impeach Li'l Donnie, when the trial phase goes to the Senate, the fix appears to be in that the Republicans will hold enough members together to overturn the impeachment and not remove from Trump from office. 

It would take at least 20 Republicans peeling off to vote with the Democrats to make the impeachment stick. Right now, there are at best about 5 GOP Senators who may go against party loyalty and vote to impeach Donald Trump. 

In other words? 

"Ain't nothing gonna happen."

But IF something is gonna happen, it will be because of Marie Yovanovitch  

Two things happened that adds a bit more fire to the impeachment effort. 

One is that the former U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine was a very effective in her testimony blowing up the G.O.P. talking point that when Trump pressed Ukraine for investigations, he was trying to root out corruption, rather than dig up dirt on a political opponent. In her role as ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch was a powerful and effective force in working with Ukraine to help that country root out corruption. However this work did not dovetail with Trump's own obsessions for Ukraine to delve into the discredited right wing conspiracy theories in order to undermine Li'l Donnie's political rivals. So a campaign of negative rumors and lies designed to undermine Marie Yovanovitch began, culminating with Trump replacing her as the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine.

The second thing happened during Marie Yovanovitch's testimony before Congress when Trump couldn't keep his damn mouth shut any longer, tweeting attacks on her in a manner that can be described as trying to intimidate a witness. Witness intimidation is a crime and could add to up to one more article of impeachment. It is also another crass example of Donald Trump's casual but malicious misogyny; he kept his mouth shut about the two men who testified to Congress on Wednesday; it's only when a woman is on the stage to have her say that Trump feels compelled to vent his spleen. His actions on Twitter were those of an unrepentant bully. 

Marie Yovanovitch is a woman of good character with a long record of service to her country. She is intelligent and credible. And her testimony before Congress on Friday lines up to support everything that shows Trump was a corrupt influence on an ally to force them to engage in actions to benefit him personally. 

My faith in the system to deliver truth, justice and honor is still quite shaken. "Ain't nothing gonna happen" is still my refrain. 

But maybe, just maybe if something good can actually happen, we will owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Marie Yovanovitch.