Two top officials who served on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council staff testified that they had seen no evidence that the Ukraine government interfered in the 2016 election, contradicting a claim the president has made in public and private.
The former officials, Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, were responding to questions from House impeachment investigators, who released transcripts of their depositions on Friday.
The testimony undercuts a conspiracy theory that has been pushed by Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, as he sought to upend the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia sought to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
According to Giuliani, Ukrainian officials conspired with the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to help boost the Democratic nominee’s campaign and damage Trump’s candidacy. No evidence has emerged to support that idea.
In his testimony, Vindman said there was no “factual basis” for such claims. “I am, frankly, unaware of any authoritative basis for Ukranian interference in 2016 elections, based on my knowledge,” he said.
Hill went further, telling lawmakers she had no reason to believe that the intelligence community’s assessment was wrong or that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, though she clarified that she was referring only to the government in Kyiv.
Hill appeared frustrated by repeated questions from the Republicans’ lead counsel about a POLITICO article from January 2017, which said a Ukrainian-American working for the DNC had met up with top officials at the Ukrainian embassy to discuss Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s ties to Russia.
“It is a fiction that the Ukrainian government was launching an effort to upend our election, upend our election to mess with our Democratic systems,” Hill testified.
Asked whether a Ukrainian-American might have been interested in “injecting” negative information about Manafort into the press, Hill retorted that the same could be said of the Ukrainian-American operatives Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Giuliani associates “who were also trying to subvert our democracy and who managed to get one of our ambassadors sacked.”
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Two top officials who served on Trump’s National Security Council said they'd seen no evidence Ukraine's government interfered in the 2016 election, contradicting a claim Trump has made in public https://t.co/BwrggazXnu
— POLITICO (@politico) November 8, 2019Hill, after repeated questions by R's about negative info being pushed out about Manafort: "There are Ukrainians pushing out information about Masha Yovanovitch which is untrue. Why don't you ask about that as well? Is Masha Yovanovitch any less of an American that Mr Manafort?" pic.twitter.com/Z2epQKsW88
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) November 8, 2019
Fiona Hill's testimony has been among the most damaging so far to President Trump.
Read it here:https://t.co/3Gwasr22gk
— POLITICO (@politico) November 8, 2019
Hill says they “spent a lot of time” in Trump’s first term trying convince him the Ukraine meddling/Crowdstrike theory was false pic.twitter.com/GJ62rMgXmb
— Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) November 8, 2019
We just released testimony of Lt. Col. Vindman and Dr. Fiona Hill, two patriotic public servants.
This is first-hand testimony on how the levers of government were abused to help the president politically, at the cost of our national security.
Read: https://t.co/B2Ann0FN0T
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) November 8, 2019
In the context, it’s no great surprise. But still, this passage from Fiona Hill’s testimony, showing Trump refused to accept representations from his security people that the “2016 Ukrainian influence op” was bogus is astonishing. pic.twitter.com/AKV7bYt0kn
— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) November 8, 2019
Vindman Transcript by Meghashyam Mali on Scribd
just unbelievable. Hill on Sondland being a counterintelligence risk pic.twitter.com/2OM9e6ZC1n
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) November 9, 2019
More Hill on Ukraine 2016 theory: "If we have people …chasing rabbit holes because Rudy Giuliani or others have been feeding information to The Hill [Solomon] or Politico [Ken Vogel article from 2017] we are not going to be prepared as a country to push back on this again." pic.twitter.com/YGnFQ5Ls7B
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) November 8, 2019
Fiona Hill told lawmakers during her deposition that she received "death threats, calls at my home" and people showing up "hammering" at her front door ahead of her Hill appearance.
"Now, I'm not easily intimidated, but that made me mad." pic.twitter.com/rNA4ktfSQj— Meredith Lee (@meredithllee) November 8, 2019
This is a pretty widespread conclusion among almost all Russia experts. Because that’s how Russia works. It would have been strange if they had *not* targeted him. https://t.co/KUVmiOCnRX
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 9, 2019
Let’s remember an overlooked point: The OMB director and the WH chief of staff ARE THE SAME PERSON!!! https://t.co/q7ZVH4amd7
— Rob George (@RobGeorge) November 9, 2019
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