constituents. fiona hill is going to say, listen, you guys are talking about, the president had a good-faith effort that ukraine was involved in 2016. so that makes all this okay. no. based on her opening, she s going to say there s no basis for that. it s a conspiracy speculation. and by engaging in it, no matter whether you thought it was good faith, it is bad practice because not only are you ignoring and, therefore, mitigating the wrongdoing of russia, but you are creating a national security threat by not focusing on the real entity and that leaves us unprepared and is a national security threat. do you accept that? i do, and president putin proves her right. yesterday he was talking about how ukraine is now at the center of election meddling. and, chris here to the there s a couple of defenses we ve heard about the president. one if the ukrainians didn t know about it, how is it a, quote, bribery or extortion. we heard from ms. cooper as early as july 25th, they were
elections to help hillary clinton. this is something pushed by the republicans on the committee as well as the president himself and rudy giuliani. the president, of course,eration the notion that ukraine may have interfered and that also being placed as a condition for roughly $400 million in military aid and a key meeting with between president trump and president zelensky in ukraine. asked for those investigations. several witnesses have testified it s all been part of this discussion about moving forward. but fiona hill is going to make some very serious concerns raised about the any suggestion that ukraine interfered and saying you can take the eye off the ball of russia. she s going to say this based on questions and statements i have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, you crane did. this is a fictional narrative that s been perp
unfolded. it s the closest thing we ve seen to putting meat on the bones of the allegations this was a bribe. that s how it was intended and solicited. let s begin here on capitol hill with senior congressional correspondent manu raju. what more do we know about hill s testimony? she s going to make it very clear that the claim being pushed by not just president trump but some of his republican allies on the house intelligence committee that ukraine meddled or may have meddled in the 2016 elections to help hillary clinton. she s going to call that fiction. she s going to make it clear that this is a fictional narrative perpetrated and propagated by russian security services themselves. she s going to make it clear this is distracting from what the u.s. should be focusing on, the kremlin s interference and effort to interfere in the 2020 elections. she also says this. she says she respects the work of congress, but if the
the republican report. instead, they decided to adopt minority views filled with collusion conspiracy theories. needless to say, it s entirely possible for two separate nations to engage in election meddling at the same time, and republicans believe we should take meddling seriously by all foreign countries. regardless of which campaign is the target. i d like to submit for the record a copy of our report titled report on russian active measures. i yield back. today we are joined by dr. fiona hill and david holmes. dr. fiona hill is a former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for europe and russia on the national security council. before returning to government, she was a senior fellow at the brookings institution where she directed the center on the
hearing this, bolton abruptly ended the meeting. undeterred, sondland brought the ukrainian delegation and alexander vindman downstairs to another part of the white house where they were joined by dr. hill. in this second meeting, sondland was more explicit. ukraine needed to conduct investigations if they were to get a meeting at all. bolton directed dr. hill to report this to nsc legal adviser john eisenberg telling her, you go and tell eisenberg that i am not part of whatever drug deal sondland and mulvaney are cooking up on this. and you go ahead and tell him what you heard and what i ve said. dr. hill did so, as did lieutenant colonel vindman, who separately approached the same lawyers with his concerns. on july 18, the day before dr. hill left her post at the nsc, holmes participated in a secure interagency video conference on ukraine. towards the end of the meeting, a representative from the office