Ukraine meddling a fiction, inquiry told
Donald Trump’s former top Russia adviser has accused his Republican allies of pushing a ‘‘fictional narrative’’ that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election during her testimony on the final day of public impeachment hearings.
Fiona Hill said the ‘‘false’’ allegation, one of the two issues Trump wanted the recently installed Ukrainian president to investigate, was being spread by Russia and should not be repeated for ‘‘domestic political’’ reasons in America.
Her testimony struck a blow to one of the Republicans’ core defence lines to the impeachment push – that the president had genuine concerns about how Ukraine had acted during the 2016 campaign and it was legitimate to ask for it to be probed. Hill who was raised in County Durham, northern England, before becoming a US citizen and joining the national security committee, was speaking before the House intelligence committee, which is leading the impeachment bid.
‘‘Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country – and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,’’ Hill said in her opening statement.
‘‘This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.’’
Hill said she would refuse to ‘‘legitimise’’ the ‘‘alternate narrative’’ and stressed that America’s own top intelligence officials had unanimously concluded that Russia was to blame.
‘‘We must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm,’’ Hill said in the penultimate line of her prepared remarks.
While Hill did not explicitly mention Trump, the rebuke appeared in part targeted at the Oval Office given it is the president that has repeatedly floated the Ukraine meddling claim.
Elsewhere in her testimony, she provided details of the alarm that spread inside the Trump administration as it became apparent allies of the president were seeking investigations into the Ukraine meddling claims and Joe Biden, the former US vice president now seeking the White House.
She recounted how John Bolton, the then national security adviser and her direct boss, had described Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who was publicly lobbying for the probes, as a ‘‘hand grenade’’ that could explode at any point.
Asked if she understood the comment, Hill said she did. She called Giuliani’s public comments at the time, which included unfounded allegations about Biden, as ‘‘pretty explosive’’ and ‘‘quite incendiary’’, fearing they would ‘‘probably come back to haunt us’’.
Appearing alongside Hill was David Holmes, a diplomat stationed at the US embassy in Ukraine.
Holmes recounted a call he overheard where Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, was talking to Trump on July 26. That was the day after the US president had asked Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce the investigations.
Holmes said that when Trump came on the call, Sondland ‘‘winced’’ and held the phone away from his ear, apparently because the US president was speaking at such a high volume.
Holmes testified that he heard Sondland tell Trump that Zelenskiy ‘‘loves your ass’’.
Trump then allegedly asked ‘‘so he’s gonna do the investigation’’, to which Sondland said: ‘‘He’s gonna do it.’’
The testimony suggests that the president was taking a personal interest in whether the investigations, which were politically beneficial for him, were going to be announced.
Trump expressed doubt on the claim, writing on Twitter: ‘‘Never have I been watching a person making a call, which was not on speakerphone, and been able to hear or understand a conversation. I’ve even tried, but to no avail. Try it live!’’
Elsewhere, Holmes became yet another witness to testify that he believed almost US$400 million (NZ$625m) in military aid was held back from Ukraine to secure the investigations.
Holmes said by late August s ‘‘clear impression’’ was the hold on the money showed either Trump’s ‘‘dissatisfaction’’ that the investigations had not been launched or was an attempt to ‘‘pressure’’ them to do so.