President Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at Jennifer Williams, a State Department employee who is set to testify publicly this week, the latest in a series of social media attacks by the President on those cooperating with the House impeachment inquiry.
Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence and a career foreign service officer, is scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. In his tweet, Trump resurfaced an unfounded accusation he has raised against other officials who have testified in the probe, characterizing Williams as a Never Trumper and associating her with other “Never Trumpers.”
Pence’s office on Sunday pointedly declined to defend Williams after Trump’s Twitter attack.
“Jennifer is a State Department employee,” Pence’s press secretary Katie Waldman said in response to CNN’s request for comment.
Trump’s attacks on Williams come after he tweeted Friday as former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s was testifying that “everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad” — an attack Democrats may treat as witness intimidation.
It’s the most predictable pattern in Washington: Trump will attack when cornered. He clearly feels cornered by anyone and everything associated with the impeachment inquiry. That includes a frustrated and unwilling witness like Williams. It doesn’t matter if you’re an active-duty military person, an ambassador, a current or former member of his staff, or Pence’s. What ties these people is not that they oppose Trump. They don’t. They all work or worked for him. What ties them is that they have sworn an oath to tell the truth under threat of perjury about what happened here.