echoed in newspaper headlines across the country today. but it wasn t just fiona hill s testimony. we heard essentially the same warning from ambassador marie yovanovitch as well. how would this theory of ukraine interference in the 2016 election be in vladimir putin s interest? well, i mean, president putin must have been aware that there were concerns in the u.s. about russian meddling in the 2016 elections and what the potential was for russian meddling in the future. so, you know, classic for an intelligence officer to try to throw off the scent and, you know, create an alternative narrative that maybe might get picked up and get some credence. an alternative narrative that would absolve his own wrongdoing? yeah. yeah. intelligence committee counsel dan goldman, who you saw
committee that this theory that ukraine is the real entity that interfered in our 2016 election, that theory is not only false, it is a false piece of information invented by and promoted by russian intelligence. do not try to rope me into spreading that fake theory. if you do so, you are helping russia in a campaign they designed to hurt us, to hurt us. do you want to hurt the united states and help russia? if so keep spreading that. otherwise, don t do that. right? we get similar warnings from the top ukrainian expert on trump s national career and foreign service officer and from the ambassador to ukraine who was put there by president trump. we get the intelligence committee counsel spelling out over and over again citing publicly available and checkable information, hey, you kno,? putin is the one who s been spreading this from moscow as well. in addition to that, if you ve been closely watching as this scandal has been unfolding.
expert on the national security council, pleading with congressional republicans thursday not to keep spreading the conspiracy theory that ukraine was responsible for meddling in 2016, not russia. but republicans ignored those warnings. the ranking member of the house intelligence committee, devin nunes, continued to push that false claim right afterwards in the hearing. so at the end of the day the commander in chief, concerned about 2016 election meddling by ukraine, sounds like you just earlier testified you weren t aware of that, but if that was the concern of the president, to try to get to the bottom of it, and it s the concern of ambassador sondland who was trying to set up meetings on behalf of to ensure, really, that meetings occurred and phone calls occurred to strengthen the relationship. so nunes trying to suggest that perhaps she wasn t aware of the ukraine theory even though she had just said it was a
i also would argue that perhaps the most important sunday surrogate appearance from a republican yesterday was actually tom bosser, the president s former homeland security adviser who was on i believe abc who addressed the ukraine theory, that ukraine was involved in election meddling and server and he said it wasn t true and he and others told the white house it wasn t true, but it was something he hung on to because he could not face the idea that he received russian interference that may have helped him win the election. we know he thinks that makes him an illegitimate president. that s the fear that he has. it shows again the president willing to dance in the fever swamps of conservative fringes and these conspiracies led to he s led by among others rudy giuliani who has continued to push those going forward. that is where the president and this white house is right now. there isn t a robust defense. there isn t a suggestion of fighting on the facts. they re still trying to mudd