Marie Yovanovitch testified that the president had the authority to remove her as ambassador. That is not in dispute. She however asked why she needed to be humiliated as opposed to just removed?
What is enlightening about this affair is what's rising to the surface for all to see, is that apart from Trump's laughable mantra that he was fighting corruption in Ukraine, is that he was trying to FOSTER CORRUPTION in the Ukraine -- for his own personal and financial benefit. Marie Yovanovitch wouldn't play along -- so she had to go.
Comey's firing, for not being nice to Mike Flynn, can be argued as an official act with a corrupt purpose. It would be like a mayor of a city receiving a speeding ticket from a police officer that he has the right to fire -- and firing her so she can't go to court. He has the right to fire but not for a corrupt purpose.
How is Trump trying to foster corruption in Ukraine? Does ANYONE think that the hiring of Hunter Biden a completely unqualified drug addict was for any reason other than to curry favor with his father, an influential senior official in the U.S. Government? I am not a parent, but I can recognize that the overwhelming majority of parents place a higher premium on the well-being and happiness of their children than on their own (look at how many wealthy people have risked jail time to get their children into ivy league schools of late). So of course funneling benefits to the family of a politician is an indirect way of providing benefits to them. That there was nothing "illegal" and that so much of the establishment dismisses it is EXACTLY what Trump refers to as the "swamp" and is the sort of routinely accepted (and defended) corruption that the entrenched political establishment (on a bi-partisan basis) wallows in and the very sort of self-dealing Trump was elected, in part, to go after.
Humiliating someone is not a criminal nor impeachable act.
Comey's firing, again, was an official act, within the absolute discretion of the President under Article II of the Constitution. No statute can criminalize the exercise of an inherent power of the Presidency. It should never have been subject to a criminal investigation by an Executive branch subordinate. If Congress felt like investigating it as a potentially impeachable abuse of power, so be it, but the DoJ is not an investigative arm of the Congress.
In fact, part of the problem is that Congress long ago sought to farm out the investigative function insofar as oversight of the executive to "special" or "independent" actors in the Executive branch (the practical reason was to mask what were often highly partisan investigations which were viewed as such by the public) and to provide a veneer of legitimacy from criminal justice investigatory tactics to what are really political investigations of political differences. It needs to stop.
Watergate at least had some actual criminal acts by the President which were outside the exercise of his inherent powers (active engagement in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in). All of the allegations against this President have been nothing more than efforts to provide a pretext for initiating a process by which subsequent "process crimes" could be further contrived (and even these have been based on paper-thin taffy-pulling of statutes and precedent).
Trump could have flat out ordered an end to the investigations for any reason he wanted. He is the President of the United States, ever single bit of authority that any and ever Executive Branch employee exercises is HIS authority, delegated to them to exercise on HIS behalf. Every bit of prosecutorial discretion that exists is also legitimately exercise by the President.
Now, unless you are going to argue that anytime a President exercises their power in a manner that is to their personal political benefit it is an impeachable abuse of power, you are on very unsound footing. If you ARE going to argue that, I would challenge you to find ANY President in history that has not more often than not exercise their power in a manner to their political benefit at some point in their Presidency.
