Been following the impeachment, of course, but not close enough to be tracking all the characters that well, or the timelines. I had a good deal of driving today, though, and listened to about three hours of the Yovanovitch testimony, which was eye opening.

Here’s a thing I haven’t heard brought out - it’s related to the question of why Yovanovitch was smeared and yanked from her job (which seems to be accepted at Hmm).

Yovanovitch was smeared by Ghouliani and Lutsenko (a corrupt prosecutor);
Lutsenko and Yovanovitch were adversaries;
Trump praised Lutsenko, even though he is supposedly concerned about Ukrainian corruption ;
Lutsenko was out because of Zelensky’s election;

Doesn’t it seem obvious that Trump had a deal with Lutsenko to smear Biden, then saw it evaporate due in part to Yovanovitch’s corruption fighting?

Trump was fully engaged with the corrupt Ukraine government (in his natural element) and then lost his connections and had to start from scratch by putting the muscle on the new guy, leading in with a little extortion.

Why else would he characterize Marie Yovanovitch as a bad person?

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller