President Donald Trump’s former top Russia aide sparred with Republican lawmakers on Thursday, accusing them of emboldening Moscow by pushing a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

In her opening statement before House impeachment investigators, Fiona Hill said lawmakers were weaponizing “falsehoods” that advance Russian interests and distract from its aggression in eastern Europe and around the world.

“I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016,” Hill told the House Intelligence Committee in its seventh public impeachment hearing.

“These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” added Hill, a longtime Russia hawk.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, pushed back against Hill’s characterization, pointing to the committee’s GOP-led report last year concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Separately, Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have amplified unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Hillary Clinton.

“In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” Hill added.

GOP lawmakers have sought to legitimize Trump’s skepticism of Ukraine by casting the country’s government as “out to get” Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Nunes has sought to depose Alexandra Chalupa, a former Democratic National Committee official whom Nunes has accused of colluding with Ukraine to undermine Trump in 2016. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has rebuffed the request.

In addition to Hill and many of Trump’s own national security officials, other witnesses for the impeachment inquiry have similarly rejected Nunes' claims.

Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told investigators last week that one particular data point Nunes often highlights — an effort to dig up dirt on Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman — was actually a campaign to tar Ukraine’s former pro-Moscow president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Nunes has also cited a 2016 op-ed by Ukraine’s then-ambassador to the U.S., who criticized Trump for suggesting that Russia had a right to annex Crimea, a move that drew international condemnation. Yovanovitch said “isolated incidents” do not support the idea that the Ukrainian government launched an effort to damage Trump in 2016.

Hill sounded the alarm more broadly about Russia’s aggression in the region, in addition to its ongoing efforts to interfere in U.S. elections and weaken America’s global influence. She argued that Russia has largely achieved its goals.

“The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today,” she said. “Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.”

Hill, who was the top Russia hand on the National Security Council until July, warned that Moscow’s “ security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election.”

Hill’s appearance before the House Intelligence Committee comes as Democrats are taking what may be their final shot to buttress their case that Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine, through Giuliani, to investigate his political rivals.

Lawmakers leading the impeachment inquiry say they are more confident than ever they have clinched their case against Trump — while Republicans continue to assert there is no direct evidence implicating the president in a Ukraine scheme.

On Thursday, investigators turned to Hill to amplify her account as a White House insider who attended key meetings on Ukraine and reported her concerns about Giuliani’s efforts to a superior. Giuliani, Hill said, was “clearly putting forward issues and ideas that would come back to haunt us.”

“And, in fact, I think that’s where we are today,” Hill added.

Sitting alongside Hill was David Holmes, a minor player in the inquiry but one who supplied key evidence. Holmes overheard a phone call on July 26 between Trump and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, during which Trump audibly asked about the status of his desired investigation targeting former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Of course the president is pressing for a Biden investigation before he’ll do these things the Ukrainians want,” Holmes said, adding that he and his colleagues at the embassy “agreed it was obvious what the president was asking for.”

Republican lawmakers sought to poke holes in Holmes’ account, noting that the Trump-Sondland phone call was not revealed until last week. And Trump pushed back against Holmes Thursday morning as he was reading his opening statement.

“Never have I been watching a person making a call, which was not on speakerphone, and been able to hear or understand a conversation,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I’ve even tried, but to no avail.”

Holmes defended his recollection of the encounter, saying it was memorable even though he did not take notes about it at the time.

“This was a very distinctive experience,” Holmes said under questioning Thursday. “Very colorful language was used. They were directly addressing something I had been working on for weeks, months.”

Neither witness was expected to produce the type of testimony that Sondland provided Wednesday, when he told lawmakers that Trump, through Giuliani, had authorized a quid pro quo with Ukraine, denying the country’s new president a White House meeting until he announced an investigation targeting Biden and his son Hunter.

Sondland also indicated that a slew of senior officials knew about the effort, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Pompeo and Perry on Wednesday pushed back on Sondland’s claim.

Hill’s closed-door testimony represented a crucial break for Democrats in the nascent stages of the investigation. She revealed that her boss, former national security adviser John Bolton, worried about a “drug deal” that Mulvaney and Sondland were allegedly involved in, referring to a Ukraine pressure campaign. He also called Giuliani a “hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up” over his efforts to smear Yovanovitch, according to Hill.

Trump removed Yovanovitch from her post in May and attacked her during a phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on July 25.

Hill also testified about Sondland’s conduct, alleging that he attended meetings about Ukraine that were not in his purview. Hill said she confronted him after a July 10 White House meeting during which Sondland raised the prospect of Trump’s investigations directly with Ukrainian officials.

“I took it to mean investigations for a meeting,” Hill said Thursday, echoing Sondland’s view that a Trump-Zelensky meeting at the White House was conditioned on Ukraine announcing Trump’s desired investigations. Republicans argued Wednesday that Sondland was an unreliable witness who overstated his relationship with the president.

She later told lawmakers that Sondland was “involved in a domestic political errand,” while she and her NSC colleagues were “involved in national security foreign policy.”

“I said to him... I think this is all going to blow up. And here we are,” Hill added.

Holmes, meanwhile, went into detail about the phone call between Trump and Sondland that he overheard. Holmes said he was with Sondland at a restaurant in Kyiv, and Trump asked Sondland about the status of “the investigations.” According to Holmes, Sondland replied that the Ukrainians were “gonna do it,” and that Zelensky “loves your ass.”

Holmes also said it was possible that the Russians intercepted the phone call, which took place at an outdoor cafe on an unsecure cell phone. According to Holmes, Sondland told him that Trump only cares about “‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Giuliani was pushing.”

Sondland said Wednesday he had no reason to doubt Holmes’ account, but he could not recall specifically mentioning the Bidens.

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine

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