diplomat

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, ended his tenure as America’s top diplomat in Moscow on Sunday after nearly three years, spanning the Trump and Biden administrations, and will retire from a lengthy career in government service.

President Joe Biden spoke to members of the State Department on Thursday about their critical diplomatic role under his administration, saying, “America is back. Diplomacy is back. You are the center of all I intend to do. You are the heart of it.”

Under Secretary of State David Hale defended former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, calling her an “exceptional officer doing exceptional work.” He testified that President Donald Trump’s tweets targeting the diplomat were “wrong.”

Under Secretary of State David Hale defended former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, calling her an “exceptional officer doing exceptional work.” He testified that President Donald Trump’s tweets targeting the diplomat were “wrong.”

The phone call State Department official David Holmes overheard between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland lasted just two minutes. But it won’t be easily forgotten. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Holmes told Trump impeachment investigators, “someone calling the President from a mobile phone at a restaurant, and then having a conversation of this level of candor, colorful...

Former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch asked whether it was necessary for President Donald Trump to smear her reputation, following questioning from Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff interrupted the impeachment hearing Friday morning to give the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine a chance to answer President Donald Trump’s real-time attacks on her on Twitter. Schiff took over the questioning to read aloud Trump’s broadside against the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, as she was testifying. “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump tweeted...

Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako waved and smiled from an open car in a parade Sunday marking Naruhito’s enthronement as more than 100,000 delighted well-wishers cheered, waved small flags and took photos from packed sidewalks. Security was extremely tight, with police setting up 40 checkpoints leading to the parade area. Selfie sticks, bottles and banners — and even shouting...

Iran is acknowledging for the first time it has an open case before its Revolutionary Court over the 2007 disappearance of a former FBI agent on an unauthorized CIA mission to the country, renewing questions over what happened to him. In a filing to the United Nations, Iran said the case over Robert Levinson was “on going,” without elaborating.

A senior U.S. diplomat told Congress that he was briefed on conversations President Donald Trump had with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban in which the two foreign leaders talked Trump into a negative view about Ukraine and its new leader. George Kent, a senior State Department official responsible for Europe, told House investigators that Putin...

Transcript of key State Department official’s testimony reveals more damaging evidence against President Trump.

A senior State Department envoy has written a highly critical assessment of the Trump administration’s abrupt withdrawal of troops from northeast Syria, U.S. officials said Thursday. Two officials familiar with the matter said the internal memo by the top American diplomat in northern Syria, William Roebuck, takes the administration to task for not doing enough to prevent Turkey’s invasion of...

There were three words President Donald Trump wanted to hear from the Ukraine president: Investigations, Biden, Clinton. That’s according to the transcript, released Thursday, of an impeachment inquiry interview with career State Department official George Kent. “Potus wanted nothing less than President Zelenskiy to go to the microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,” Kent testified. “Basically there needed to...

“I now do recall.” With that stunning reversal, diplomat Gordon Sondland handed House impeachment investigators another key piece of corroborating testimony Tuesday. He acknowledged what Democrats contend was a clear quid pro quo, pushed by President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, with Ukraine.

One by one, the 40 descendants of a group of Israeli siblings leaned down and hugged the elderly Greek woman to whom they owe their very existence, as she sat in her wheelchair and wiped away tears streaking down her wrinkled face. Clutching the hands of those she hid, fed and protected as a teenager more than 75 years ago,...

The White House was alerted as early as mid-May — earlier than previously known — that a budding pressure campaign by Rudy Giuliani and Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, was rattling the new Ukrainian president, two people with knowledge of the matter tell NBC News. Alarm bells went off at the National Security Council when the White House’s top...

The three House committees leading an impeachment investigation are scheduled to hear from current and former staff of the National Security Council next week, according to four people familiar with the inquiry’s schedule. Closed-door interviews are tentatively scheduled with Charles Kupperman, a deputy to national security adviser John Bolton, and Tim Morrison, NSC’s current Russia and Europe director. Kupperman and...

William Taylor, a top diplomat to Ukraine, testified to Congress on Tuesday that President Donald Trump withheld security aid in exchange for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s investigation into the Biden family.

The family of a British teenager killed in a wrong-way crash involving the wife of an American diplomat said President Donald Trump dropped a “bombshell” during a meeting at the White House, revealing that the woman was waiting to meet them in the room next door, NBC News reported. Their lawyer said the way the meeting was proposed was “so...

George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state in the European and Eurasian Bureau, is testifying to Congress behind closed doors as part of the Democrats’ impeachment probe into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Kent arrived on Capitol Hill under a congressional subpoena after the State Department ordered several former and current administration officials not to appear for scheduled...