WASHINGTON (AP) In riveting testimony, a former national security official declared Thursday that a U.S. ambassador carried out a controversial “domestic political errand” for Donald Trump on Ukraine, an allegation undercutting a main line of the presidents defense in the impeachment inquiry.
Fiona Hill told House investigators she came to realize Ambassador Gordon Sondland wasnt simply operating outside official diplomatic channels, as she and others suspected, but carrying out instructions from Trump.
He was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy,” she testified, and those two things had just diverged.
Hills comment followed a blistering back-and-forth during questioning from Republicans at the House hearing.
Testimony from Hill and David Holmes, a State Department adviser in Kyiv, capped an intense week in the historic inquiry and reinforced the central complaint: that Trump used foreign policy for political aims, setting off alarms across the U.S. national security and foreign policy apparatus.
Democrats allege Trump was relying on the discredited idea that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election as he sought investigations in return for two things: U.S. military aid that Ukraine needed to fend off Russian aggression, and a White House visit the new Ukrainian president wanted that would demonstrate his backing from the West.
One by one, Hill, a Russia expert at the White Houses National Security Council until this summer, took on Trumps defenses.
She and Holmes both told House investigators it was abundantly clear Trumps lawyer Rudy Giuliani was pursuing political investigations of Democrats and Joe Biden in Ukraine.
He was clearly pushing forward issues and ideas that would, you know, probably come back to haunt us and in fact, Hill testified. I think that’s where we are today.”
And Hill stood up for Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Army officer who testified earlier and whom Trumps allies tried to discredit. He remains at the White House National Security Council.
At one point, Republicans interjected, trying to cut off Hills response as she flipped the script during the afternoon of questioning. The GOP lawmakers had been trying to highlight her differences with Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who delivered damaging testimony Wednesday about what he said was Trumps quid pro quo pursuit of the political investigations.
The Republican lawmakers eventually wound down their questions but continued with mini-speeches decrying the impeachment effort. Democrats, in turn, criticized Trumps actions.
Hill, a former aide to then-national security adviser John Bolton, sternly warned Republican lawmakers and implicitly Trump to quit pushing a fictional narrative that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in U.S. elections.
Trump has told others testifying in the inquiry that Ukraine tried to take me down in the 2016 election. Republicans launched their questioning Thursday reviving those theories.
Hill declared: I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternative narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine not Russia attacked us in 2016.
