WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch provided chilling detail Friday in Trump impeachment hearings of being suddenly ousted from her post and feeling threatened upon learning President Donald Trump had denounced her in a phone call to Ukraine’s president. In that call, Trump assailed her as “bad news” and said she was “going to go through some things.”

In an extraordinary moment, even in an administration filled with them, Trump himself went after her again as she spoke, tweeting from the White House that everywhere she served had “turned bad.”

Asked at the hearing about the potential effect of such censure on U.S. officials and witnesses, she said, “Well, it’s very intimidating.”

Yovanovitch was testifying on the second day of public impeachment hearings into Trump, just the fourth time in American history that the House of Representatives has launched such proceedings.

The investigation centers on whether Trump’s push for Ukrainian officials to investigate his political rivals amounted to an abuse of power, a charge he and Republicans vigorously deny.

After Trump’s tweet on Friday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee swiftly intervened, halting the questioning to read the president’s comments out loud to the witness — and Americans following the hearing — during a live broadcast across the country.

“Ambassador Yovanovitch, as we sit here testifying, the president is attacking you on Twitter,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California. He asked if it was designed to intimidate.

“I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidated,” she said.

Said Schiff, “Well, I want to let you know, Ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”

Trump, asked about it later, said, “I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech.”

Rather than distract from the career diplomat’s testimony, Trump’s interference could provide more evidence against him in the probe. Democrats said an allegation of witness intimidation could become an obstruction of justice charge in the impeachment probe.

In her testimony, Yovanovitch described a “smear campaign” against her by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and others, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., before her firing.

She told the lawmakers her sudden removal had played into the hands of “shady interests the world over” with dangerous intentions toward the United States. They have learned, she said, “how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want.”

She said quietly, “Even now words fail me.”

Her removal from her post is one of several events at the center of the impeachment effort.

In his July phone call with new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, 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 withholding military aid from Ukraine at the time.