Marie Yovanovitch: US against becoming country where ‘standing up to our government is a dangerous act’
In a Thursday opinion piece in the Washington Post, Yovanovitch acknowledged that she was retiring from the State Department after a turbulent few years.
"After nearly 34 years working for the State Department, I said goodbye to a career that I loved," she said. "It is a strange feeling to transition from decades of communicating in the careful words of a diplomat to a person free to speak exclusively for myself."
Yovanovitch said she was proud of the way she and other diplomats handled the scandalous call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“When civil servants in the current administration saw senior officials taking actions they considered deeply wrong in regard to the nation of Ukraine, they refused to take part," she explained. "When Congress asked us to testify about those activities, my colleagues and I did not hesitate, even in the face of administration efforts to silence us.”
She said it was the “American way” to speak out against world leaders without fear of retribution, and added, “I have seen dictatorships around the world, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death. We must not allow the United States to become a country where standing up to our government is a dangerous act.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/marie-yovanovitch-warns-us-against-becoming-country-where-standing-up-to-our-government-is-a-dangerous-act