President Trump’s former Russia adviser Fiona Hill was expected to warn House lawmakers in the impeachment inquiry on Thursday against pushing false conspiracy theories that minimize Russia’s meddling in US elections — because the Motherland is planning to do so again in 2020.
“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” Hill, who was until July the director for European and Russian Affairs at the White House National Security Council, will say, according to her opening statement.
Some Republican members of the committee have advanced an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Ukraine and not Russia interfered in the last presidential election.
“In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” she will say.
Hill will warn intelligence committee members that Russia is gearing up to repeat its election interference activities in 2020.
“We are running out of time to stop them,” she will say.
Like a number of career government officials who have already testified, Hill was described by colleagues as a nonpartisan foreign policy expert who has served Republican and Democratic presidents.
A naturalized US citizen, Hill calls herself as an “American by choice,” tracing her family’s roots to the same area of England as George Washington.
Thursday’s public impeachment hearing marks the last scheduled day of marathon sessions by the House Intelligence Committee focused on whether Trump wrongfully pressured Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat bidding to face Trump in 2020, his son Hunter and Ukraine.
Also scheduled to testify was David Holmes, senior staffer at the US Embassy in Ukraine, is expected to expound on testimony he gave to lawmakers last week behind closed doors.
Holmes said he overheard a July 26 phone calls from EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to the commander in chief placed on an unsecure cell phone from an outdoor cafe in Kiev.
Trump, he testified, asked Sondland about “the investigation,” and the ambassador replied that Zelensky “loves your ass” and would launch the probes.
The president, who was witholding $391 in military assistance for Ukraine at the time of the call, had asked Zelensky a day earlier to launch the probes in Ukraine during a phone call, which he described as “perfect.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
With Wires