Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that it was “shocking” to experience the “storm of criticism, lies, and malicious conspiracies” she faced before and after she testified in the House’s impeachment inquiry against President Trump. Despite this, she said she has “no regrets.” “I did—we did—what our conscience called us to do. We did what the gift of U.S. citizenship requires us to do,” she wrote, referring to herself and other civil servants who “did not hesitate” to testify before lawmakers even while facing Trump “administration efforts to silence us.” “We did this because it is the American way to speak up about wrongdoing,” she wrote, adding that citizens have to “fight” for democracy to prevent the U.S. from becoming like a dictatorship—where “blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death.” The former ambassador said the U.S. is going through “perhaps the most challenging” political time she’s witnessed, but said the “deeply disturbing” events of the past year proved institutions and citizens could “persist” and “prevail.”