HEARINGS REVEAL TRUMP’S PLAN TO PUT UKRAINE UNDER PRESSURE
▶ Fiona Hill criticises the president’s Republican allies for pushing an ‘alternative narrative’ to protect him
Two weeks of open hearings in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival concluded on Thursday, with more damaging information that implicates the US president in such a plot.
Witnesses, including former US officials, current military figures, advisers and diplomats, all spoke of a broad and consistent effort by the US president and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to use national security tools to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic candidate and former vice president Joe Biden.
On Thursday, Fiona Hill, former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, warned Republicans against peddling a false narrative to cover for Mr Trump.
“I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimise an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked us in 2016,” Ms Hill said.
She asked legislators to “please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests”.
“These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” Ms Hill said.
Similar to US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who testified on Wednesday, and former envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, Ms Hill pointed to Mr Giuliani’s destructive role in the Ukraine plot.
She said that former national security adviser John Bolton described Mr Giuliani as a hand grenade that would ultimately “blow everyone up.” Ms Hill spoke of a “smear campaign” that Mr Giuliani orchestrated against former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who testified last week.
“I think he [Bolton] meant that obviously what Mr Giuliani was saying was pretty explosive in any case; he was frequently on television making quite incendiary remarks about everyone involved in this, and that he was clearly pushing forward issues and ideas that would probably come back to haunt us, and in fact that is where we are today,” Ms Hill said.
Also testifying on Thursday was David Holmes, an embassy staffer in Kiev. Mr Holmes appeared to confirm an allegation made by Mr Sondland on Wednesday that the US president withheld military aid to Ukraine to pressure its government to investigate the Bidens.
“My clear impression was that the security assistance hold was [probably] intended by the president either as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Ukrainians who had not yet agreed to the Biden investigation, or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so,” he said.
Thursday’s hearings also revealed a larger circle around Mr Trump who knew about such efforts.
Mr Sondland said that “everyone is in the loop” including senior Cabinet officials such as Vice President Mike Pence, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and acting White House chief of staff Mike Mulvaney, who knew of Mr Trump’s and his lawyer’s thinking.
“Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret. Everyone was informed via email on July 19, days before the presidential call,” Mr Sondland said.
But the president continued to lean on Republicans in Congress to fend off the allegations. The public hearings appear to have helped Democrats in the House to make the case for impeachment, which could take place in the next few weeks, but it is still unlikely that the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority, would convict Mr Trump and push him out of office.