Quote:Tensions boil over at impeachment hearing, as Nunes accuses Schiff of 'gagging' lawmakers

Tensions between lawmakers boiled over Friday on the second day of the public impeachment hearings, when House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., repeatedly shut down GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., citing House procedure -- as an astonished Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., accused him of "gagging" the lawmaker.

"This is the fifth time you have interrupted a duly-elected member of Congress," Stefanik told Schiff, who repeatedly told her she was "not recognized" to speak.

The moment began when Nunes, as he questioned Yovanovitch, gave the remainder of his allotted time to Stefanik, who had sparred multiple times with Schiff on both Friday and during Wednesday's first nationally televised hearing.

But as Stefanik spoke, Schiff slammed down the gavel: "The gentlewoman will suspend."

"What is the interruption for now," she shot back.

What followed was a back and forth between Nunes and Schiff as to whether the Republican could offer his time to a fellow member of Congress, rather than minority counsel. Stefanik repeatedly tried to speak, only for Schiff to bang his gavel again.

"You're gagging the member from New York?" Nunes laughed at one point.

The explosive moment came during the questioning of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine as part of the House's impeachment inquiry into the circumstances surrounding President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Questioning under GOP counsel Steve Castor also turned to the issue of alleged Ukraine meddling in the 2016 election – namely reports that former DNC consultant Alexandra Chalupa had meetings during the race with officials at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington to discuss incriminating information about Trump campaign figures.

Yovanovitch said she did not believe she knew Chalupa. Further, when asked if she tried to investigate those interactions, she maintained this would have been handled in the U.S. since the meetings took place in Washington, not in Ukraine. Further, while Ukraine documents eventually were released that were damaging to former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort, Yovanovitch testified that she still doesn’t have information to suggest any effort to target then-candidate Trump.

The afternoon session came on the back of a similarly tense morning session, where Yovanovitch pointed her finger at Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani while detailing her sudden removal from her diplomatic post, as the president fired back in realtime and said every place she worked "turned bad."

Trump’s comments ignited an outcry from Democrats: Schiff read Trump's anti-Yovanovitch tweet during the hearing, and called it “witness intimidation.”

Yovanovitch told lawmakers, regarding the tweet: "It's very intimidating,"

During her appearance, Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who served both Republican and Democratic presidents, relayed her story of being suddenly recalled by Trump in May, saying she believes Giuliani played a key role in telling people she was not sufficiently supportive of the president.

“I do not understand Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me, nor can I offer an opinion on whether he believed the allegations he spread about me,” Yovanovitch said.

She argued the efforts against her by the president's allies hindered her work.

“If our chief representative is kneecapped, it limits our effectiveness to safeguard the vital national security interests of the United States,” Yovanovitch said.

After the hearing started, Trump began attacking her, tweeting, "Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad." He added, "It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors."

Schiff subsequently read the tweets out at the hearing, with Democrats describing it as "witness intimidation." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., asked about the tweet, said: "Witness intimidation is a crime."

The White House subsequently pushed back on the claim that Trump was intimidating witnesses.

“The tweet was not witness intimidation, it was simply the President’s opinion, which he is entitled to," White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. "This is not a trial, it is a partisan political process - or to put it more accurately, a totally illegitimate, charade stacked against the President. There is less due process in this hearing than any such event in the history of our country. It’s a true disgrace.”

At its core, the impeachment inquiry concerns Trump’s July call with Zelensky that first came to attention when an anonymous government whistleblower filed a complaint. In the phone conversation, Trump asked for a “favor,” according to an account provided by the White House. He wanted an investigation of Democrats and 2020 rival Joe Biden. Later, it was revealed that the administration was also withholding military aid from Ukraine, which Democrats have alleged was part of a "quid pro quo" for the investigations.

Republicans continued to push back on that claim on Friday, arguing that the aid was delivered -- after a delay -- without any such investigation. Stefanik specifically asked Yovanovitch about "defensive lethal aid" that she had advocated for.

"That was not provided by President Obama, it was provided by President Trump?" she asked.

"That's correct," Yovanovitch replied.

At the same time the hearing began Friday, the White House released a new transcript of the president’s first call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which showed Trump agreeing to meet with Ukraine’s president-elect -- without preconditions -- in the first official phone call between the two leaders.

Nunes read the entire letter in his opening statement. A separate call between the two leaders ignited the impeachment inquiry, and Republicans suggested the new transcript is helpful to the president's argument he did nothing wrong in his conversations with Zelensky.

Yovanovitch's removal is one of several events at the center of the impeachment effort.

"These events should concern everyone in this room," Yovanovitch said in her opening remarks. "Shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want."

Democrats have worked to connect the circumstances of Yovanovitch’s ouster to Trump’s alleged pressure campaign to enlist Zelensky in the effort to damage 2020 rival Joe Biden.

“Some have argued, that a president has the ability to nominate or remove any ambassador he wants, that they serve at the pleasure of the president. And that is true,” Schiff, D-Calif., said. “The question before us is not whether Donald Trump could recall an American ambassador with a stellar reputation for fighting corruption in Ukraine, but why would he want to?”

Republicans portrayed the hearing as a waste of time.

“It’s unfortunate that today, and for most of next week, we will continue engaging in the Democrats’ day-long TV spectacles instead of solving the problems we were all sent to Washington to address,” Nunes said.

In particular, Yovanovitch and others have described Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as leading what one called an “irregular channel” outside the diplomatic mainstream of U.S.-Ukraine relations.

Giuliani and others had claimed Yovanovitch was not supportive of the president and that she had criticized him to others. Trump, in a conversation with Zelensky, referred to her as “bad news.”

Asked on Friday what she thought of those comments from Trump, she said, “I couldn’t believe it. Shocked appalled. Devastated.”

Schiff claimed Friday she was "too tough on corruption for some, and her principled stance made her enemies” and it became clear Trump “wanted her gone."

Meanwhile, Giuliani also blasted Yovanovich during her testimony, noting that he collected information from “a number of witnesses” about her. In a lengthy statement to Fox News, Giuliani accused Yovanovich, and the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, of “being involved in blatant partisan political activities during the 2016 election.”

“The information I obtained was in the nature of evidence form a number of witnesses. All of them, some allies, some opponents, agreed on Ambassador Yovanovich’s wrongdoing,” Giuliani said, adding that the witnesses “could testify among other things that she blocked Ukrainian witnesses who had evidence of illegal interference in 2016 election from getting visas and coming to the U.S.”

Lawmakers, as they have in previous meetings, on Friday clashed with each other over procedure. Before the testimony began Friday, Schiff shut down Stefanik for the first time after Stefanik asked if he would “continue to prohibit witnesses from answering Republican questions.” Schiff said it wasn’t a “proper” point of order, and then declined to recognize Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan who also tried to raise a parliamentary question.

Americans are deeply entrenched in two camps over impeachment, resulting in a mounting political battle that will further test the nation in one of the most polarizing eras of modern times.

Pelosi on Thursday brushed aside the Latin phrase “quid pro quo” that Democrats have been using to describe Trump’s actions with a more colloquial one: Bribery.

Trump continued to assail the proceedings as “a hoax” on Thursday, and House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy dismissed the witness testimony as hearsay, at best second-hand information.