The final testimony of an extraordinary week of impeachment hearings came from a former White House national security adviser who wrote the book on Vladimir Putin — literally — and a political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine who overheard a pivotal conversation between President Donald Trump and European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland.
Takeaways from Day 5 of the impeachment inquiry before the House Intelligence Committee:
‘Fictional narrative’
Fiona Hill is a Russia expert who’s written extensively on the Kremlin, and she made that clear from the outset when she scolded Republican lawmakers for propagating what she said was a “fictional narrative” — that somehow Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Those discredited theories have been advanced by Trump himself, who in a July 25 phone call at the center of the impeachment inquiry asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate the possibility.
Hill said the unwillingness by some to accept Russia’s role has profound consequences at a time when Russia’s security services have “geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election.” Putin, she said, deploys millions of dollars to “weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.”
“When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy,” Hill said.
She also implored impeachment investigators to stop advancing fictions that she said distract from the attention needed to fight Russian interference.
“In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” Hill said.
‘The big stuff’
The July 26 lunch on an outdoor terrace in a Kyiv restaurant started out social enough. There was a bottle of wine and casual chatter about marketing strategies for Sondland’s hotel business.
Then, according to David Holmes, a counselor at the U.S. embassy there, Sondland said he was going to call Trump to give him an update. The conversation Holmes overheard was loud — and memorable.
Holmes said he heard Sondland tell Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “loves your ass.”
“I then heard President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’ Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it.'” He said Sondland told Trump that Zelenskiy will do “anything you ask him to.”
When the call ended, Holmes said he asked Sondland if it was true that Trump did not “give a s–t about Ukraine.” Sondland said that was indeed the case and that the president only cares about the “big stuff.”
“I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the Biden investigation that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.” That was a reference to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who had been pushing for Ukraine investigations.
The account of the conversation largely lined up with Sondland’s version, though Sondland testified Wednesday that he doesn’t remember discussing Biden.
‘Domestic political errand’
Hill’s testimony also vividly outlined the diverging objectives of Trump’s official staff and a parallel effort led by Giuliani.
She described her alarm with the work of Sondland, who was central in trying to get Ukraine to announce political investigations the president wanted. Sondland acknowledged his role in those efforts Wednesday, laying out the contours of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. “Everyone,” he said, “was in the loop.”
But Hill insisted that she was never on the same page with Sondland.
“He was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security policy,” she said.
She said in retrospect, she thinks she may have been unfair to Sondland because she can see now that Sondland was trying to carry out something that the president had instructed him to do.
Immigrant stories
Hill, a British-born immigrant, said Trump allies who have suggested her National Security Council colleague Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has dual loyalty were being “deeply unfair.”
Vindman was 3 years old in 1979 when his family fled the Soviet-controlled Ukraine for the U.S. During his Army career, Vindman served as an infantry officer and did tours in South Korea, Germany and Iraq. In October 2004, he was wounded by a roadside bomb and awarded the Purple Heart.
But Vindman, an NSC Ukraine specialist, has faced questions from Trump allies about whether his loyalties may be divided because of his origins. He has steadfastly maintained his loyalty is to the United States.
“This is a country of immigrants,” Hill reminded lawmakers. “This is what, for me, really does make America great. I’m sure that every single person here — some people perhaps came reluctantly, and some came by choice, as I did. For me, this is the essence of Americans and why I wanted to be here and why I wanted to stay here.”
The missing witness
His name was mentioned dozens of times on Thursday alone, but former national security adviser John Bolton was nowhere to be seen in the committee room. In fact, media reports indicated he was in New York.
Bolton hasn’t been subpoenaed to appear, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has so far suggested he won’t be, even though his testimony could be of high interest to impeachment investigators.
Schiff has indicated he doesn’t want a prolonged court battle over Bolton’s testimony, and Democrats have said they already have a mountain of evidence in their impeachment probe.
Still, Hill described colorful language from Bolton — she quoted him as saying that he didn’t want to be part of “whatever drug deal” Sondland and White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were “cooking up,” and she described Giuliani as a “hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up.” She described seeing him “stiffen” and abruptly end a White House meeting last July when Sondland brought up the topic of investigations.
Holmes described an August visit to Ukraine by Bolton in which he told an adviser to Zelenskiy that military aid for Ukraine would not be lifted before an upcoming meeting in Warsaw and that it would turn on whether Zelenskiy was able to “favorably impress President Trump.”
Trump on the defensive
Even before Hill’s testimony began, Trump excoriated the Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry.
In a series of tweets, Trump urged House Republican allies to “Keep fighting tough,” and told them they are “dealing with human scum who have taken Due Process and all of the Republican Party’s rights away from us during the most unfair hearings in American History.”
Still, Trump insisted that “we are winning big” and warned that “they will soon be on our turf” — presumably a reference to the inquiry moving to the Senate, which Republicans control.
Trump has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and accused Democrats and the media of pursuing a “witch hunt” to damage him heading into his 2020 reelection bid.
He claimed that he and Republicans “had a GREAT day” of testimony Wednesday, even though Sondland bolstered Democrats’ impeachment narrative as he repeatedly talked of a “quid pro quo.” Trump complained that, when he “got home to the White House & checked out the news coverage on much of television, you would have no idea they were reporting on the same event.”
“FAKE & CORRUPT NEWS!” he tweeted.
Here’s how the day unfolded
A former White House official said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s top European envoy was sent on a “domestic political errand” seeking investigations of Democrats, stunning testimony that dismantled a main line of the president’s defense in the impeachment inquiry.
In a riveting appearance on Capitol Hill, Fiona Hill also implored Republican lawmakers — and implicitly Trump himself — to stop peddling a “fictional narrative” at the center of the impeachment probe. She said baseless suggestions that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election bolster Russia as it seeks to sow political divisions in the United States.
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 his leverage over Ukraine, a young Eastern European democracy facing Russian aggression, to pursue political investigations. His alleged actions set off alarms across the U.S. national security and foreign policy apparatus.
Hill had a front row seat to some of Trump’s pursuits with Ukraine during her tenure at the White House. She testified in detail about her interactions with Gordon Sondland, saying she initially suspected the U.S. ambassador to the European Union was overstating his authority to push Ukraine to launch investigations into Democrats. But she says she now understands he was acting on instructions Trump sent through his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
“He was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy,” she testified in a daylong encounter with lawmakers. “And those two things had just diverged.”
It was just one instance in which Hill, as well as Holmes, undercut the arguments being made by Republicans and the White House. Both told House investigators it was abundantly clear Giuliani was seeking political investigations of Democrats and Joe Biden in Ukraine, knocking down assertions from earlier witnesses who said they didn’t realize the purpose of the lawyer’s pursuits. Trump has also said he was simply focused on rooting out corruption in Ukraine.
Giuliani “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.”
Hill also defended Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Army officer who testified earlier and whom Trump’s allies tried to discredit. A previous witness said Hill raised concerns about Vindman, but she said those worries centered only on whether he had the “political antenna” for the situation at the White House.
The landmark House impeachment inquiry was sparked by a July 25 phone call, in which Trump asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for investigations into Biden and the Democratic National Committee. A still-anonymous whistleblower’s official government complaint about that call led the House to launch the current probe.
After two weeks of public testimony, many Democrats believe they have enough evidence to begin writing articles of impeachment. Working under the assumption that Trump will be impeached by the House, White House officials and a small group of GOP senators met Thursday to discuss the possibility of a two week Senate trial.
There still remain questions about whether there will be additional House testimony, either in public session or behind closed doors, including from high-profile officials such as former Trump national security adviser John Bolton.
In what was seen as a nudge to Bolton, her former boss, Hill said those with information have a “moral obligation to provide it.”
She recounted one vivid incident at the White House where Bolton told her he didn’t want to be involved in any “drug deal” that Sondland and Trump’s acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were cooking up over the Ukrainian investigations Trump wanted. Hill said she conveyed similar concerns directly to Sondland.
“And I did say to him, ‘Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up,'” she said. “And here we are.”
Hill and Holmes both filled in gaps in previous testimony and poked holes in the accounts of other witnesses. They were particularly adamant that efforts by Trump and Giuliani to investigate the Burisma gas company were well-known by officials working on Ukraine to be the equivalent of probing the Bidens. That runs counter to earlier testimony from Sondland and Kurt Volker, the former Ukraine special envoy, who insisted they had no idea there was a connection.
Holmes, a late addition to the schedule, also undercut some of Sondland’s recollections about an extraordinary phone call between the ambassador and Trump on July 26, the day after the president’s call with Ukraine. Holmes was having lunch with Sondland in Kyiv and said he could overhear Trump ask about “investigations” during a “colorful” conversation.
After the phone call, Holmes said Sondland told him Trump didn’t care about Ukraine but rather about “big stuff,” meaning the “Biden investigation.” Sondland said he didn’t recall raising the Bidens.
During Thursday’s testimony, the president tweeted that while his own hearing is “great” he’s never been able to understand another person’s conversation that wasn’t on speaker. “Try it,” he suggested.
Republicans continued to mount a vigorous defense of Trump. And the top Republican on the panel was undeterred by Hill’s warnings about advancing “fictions” on Ukraine. GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California said Russian interference in the 2016 election didn’t preclude Ukraine from also trying to swing the election to stop Trump’s presidency.
“That is the Democrats’ pitiful legacy,” Nunes. He called it all part of the same effort, from “the Russia hoax” to the “shoddy sequel” of the impeachment inquiry.
Hill, the British-born coal miner’s daughter who became a U.S. citizen in 2002, left the White House before the July phone call that sparked the impeachment probe. She worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations and said she joined the Trump White House because she shared the president’s belief that relations with Russia needed to improve.
Still, she was adamant that Russia is gearing up to intervene again in the 2020 U.S. election, declaring: “We are running out of time to stop them.”
She warned that political chaos in Washington plays into Moscow’s hands.
“This is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for,” Hill said. “They would pit one side of our electorate against the others.”
Associated Press writers Colleen Long, Laurie Kellman, Zeke Miller, Matthew Daly, Andrew Taylor and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.