Fiona Hill to Rebuke Trump’s ‘Fictional Narrative’ on Ukraine Role in 2016 Election in Opening Remarks
BEYOND DISPUTE
Leah Millis/Reuters
Former White House official Fiona Hill is expected to give a scathing rebuttal of claims pushed by Donald Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others that it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. According to reports of her opening statement at her testimony before the House impeachment panel, the former National Security Council expert on Russian affairs will accuse some members on the committee of believing the Kremlin and its security services did not conduct a campaign against the U.S., but that Ukraine did. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security forces themselves,” she is expected to say, according to her prepared remarks obtained by reporters. “The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.” Hill’s remarks go on to say that intelligence agencies and bipartisan congressional reports leave this “beyond dispute.”