Experts say Trump's attacks on Marie Yovanovitch during the impeachment hearing amount to witness intimidation

Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan hold a joint news conference at the White House in Washington

• Democrats and legal experts say President Donald Trump's attacks on Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, while she testified before Congress on Friday amounted to witness intimidation. 
• As Yovanovitch testified on Friday about what she called a "smear campaign" that led to her abrupt ousting last May, Trump took to Twitter to lob attacks at the 30-year veteran diplomat. 
• House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff announced that he believed Trump was attempting to illegally intimidate Yovanovitch and other witnesses. 
• And legal experts told Insider that Trump's attacks amounted to illegal witness intimidation and were evidence that the president believes the former ambassador's testimony is damaging. 
• Follow along here for live updates on the Trump impeachment hearings.
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Democrats and legal experts say President Donald Trump's attacks on Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, while she testified before Congress on Friday amounted to witness intimidation. 

As Yovanovitch testified on Friday about what she called a "smear campaign" that led to her abrupt ousting last May, Trump took to Twitter to lob attacks at the 30-year veteran diplomat. 

"Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad," Trump tweeted. "She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President's absolute right to appoint ambassadors." 

Soon after Trump sent several tweets attacking Yovanovitch, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff read the president's tweets aloud and asked Yovanovitch to respond to Trump's claim that she made things worse in the war-torn countries she served in. 

"I don't think I have such powers, not in Mogadishu, Somalia, and not in other places," Yovanovitch replied. "I actually think that where I've served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better for the US as well as for the countries that I've served in."

Schiff, a California Democrat, then announced that he believed Trump was attempting to illegally intimidate Yovanovitch and other witnesses. 

"I want to let you know, ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously," Schiff said. 

Legal experts argued that Trump's attacks amounted to illegal witness intimidation and were evidence that the president believes the former ambassador's testimony is damaging. 

Former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter told Insider that Trump's attacks are "exactly the type of action and words mobsters use to attack straight arrow government witnesses; though mobsters didn't use Twitter." 

He went on, "Such criminals use crude lies to attack the witness' competence and integrity. I've seen it many times over the years from professional criminals who lack any fact based response to damning testimony." 

Jeffrey Cramer, a longtime former federal prosecutor, told Insider that Trump's attacks were "certainly was intended to intimidate future witnesses and/or her future willingness to talk on this subject." 

He argued that if these proceedings were being held in court, any federal judge would "lose their mind if a defendant threatened a witness in their courtroom." 

Cramer concluded, "This isn't complicated - Ambassador Yovanovitch was in the way, so Rudy and the president professionally kneecapped her while Secretary Pompeo turned his back." 

The president's attacks provoked immediate condemnation from critics online, who argued that the president was simply making matters worse for himself.