Conspiracies about Ukraine “advance Russian interest,” an expert testified.
Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing. Two witnesses described their intimate views of an attempted quid pro quo, concluding a momentous three-day stretch of public hearings. |
Fiona Hill, the White House’s former top Europe and Russia expert, who had testified previously about her efforts to oppose the pressure campaign on Ukraine; and David Holmes, an official in the United States Embassy in Ukraine, who was a witness to a key phone call between President Trump and Gordon Sondland, his ambassador to the European Union. |
What were the highlights? |
- Dr. Hill criticized Republicans for promoting what she called a “fictional narrative” embraced by Mr. Trump: that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 elections. “I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interest,” she said. “These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes.”
- Dr. Hill called Mr. Trump’s demands for Ukraine to announce investigations into Joe Biden and the 2016 elections a “domestic political errand” that diverged from American foreign policy goals. “This is all going to blow up,” she recalled telling Mr. Sondland.
- Dr. Hill was asked about a now-famous line from her deposition, in which she quoted John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, as saying, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.” She said she took “drug deal” to mean the scheme of exchanging a White House meeting for the investigations Mr. Trump sought.
- Both Dr. Hill and Mr. Holmes said that the use of the name “Burisma” — a Ukrainian energy company — was code for investigating the Bidens. Asked whether “anyone involved in Ukraine matters in the spring and summer would understand that as well,” Mr. Holmes had a one-word answer: “Yes.”
- Mr. Holmes said he had a “clear impression” that the hold on nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine was “likely intended by the president either as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Ukrainians who had not yet agreed to the Burisma/Biden investigation, or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so.”
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Fiona Hill and the ‘Russia hoax’ |
 | | T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times |
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In her testimony today, Dr. Hill reminded investigators of the ways in which Russia continues to influence American politics. I asked my colleague Scott Shane, who has written widely on the subject, what Dr. Hill may have been hoping to do with that theme. |
Scott, I thought one of the most vivid lines from Dr. Hill today was her saying Russian security services “operate like a super PAC,” spending millions to weaponize America’s own “false narratives.” What did she mean by that? |
Russia is weak economically and militarily, at least relative to the U.S. But Vladimir Putin has been creative in discovering relatively low-cost, high-payoff ways to confront the U.S. One is hacking, and one is influence and information operations. That has come back in new ways in the impeachment inquiry. Recently, Russians have enthusiastically endorsed the idea that they didn’t have anything to do with interfering in the election, but Ukrainians did. |
Why did she make so much of her testimony today about the threat of Russian meddling? |
She seemed to have felt that in the microscopic examination of the events this past summer related to the White House and Ukraine, the members of the committee might have lost the forest for the trees, and she wanted to restore a larger framework, that these are two countries — Russia and Ukraine — that are at war with each other, and Ukraine depends on us. |
We’ve heard Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, mock the idea of the “Russia hoax” over and over the past two weeks. She seemed to want to take that on. |
People can hear the words “Russia hoax” pronounced by the president, by many commentators on Fox News, and by members of the House, some of whom were at the hearing today, and take that to mean not just the idea of “collusion,” but an assertion that the Russians didn’t interfere in our elections. |
For somebody like Dr. Hill, who’s one of the top handful of experts on Russia in Washington and who co-wrote a 500-page book on Mr. Putin, it has to be just infuriating to hear that suggestion. |
In the hearing today we heard more about this “server” conspiracy, about a hacked server at the Democratic National Committee that Mr. Trump believes Ukrainians actually hacked, and not Russians. |
It’s an alternate theory to the entire set of facts on the Russian intelligence operation in 2016 that Robert Mueller and many others have established in detailed, indisputable terms. It’s like a Hail Mary pass that can somehow defeat his enemies in the media and intelligence agencies, disprove the story that there are questions about the legitimacy of his election and restore the luster of his presidency. It has the power of political emotion behind it. |
A restaurant terrace and a presidential phone call |
 | | SHO, via Instagram |
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Between a beauty supply store and a smoke shop in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, is SHO, a ritzy fine-dining destination for politicians and diplomats — and, now, the setting for a crucial piece of evidence in the impeachment investigation. |
It was there, seated on the terrace on July 26 — a day after Mr. Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president — that Mr. Sondland called the president from his cellphone, the two men speaking loudly enough that Mr. Holmes could hear both sides of the conversation. In his testimony today, he described the scene at length. |
The morning began with meetings at the Presidential Administration Building a mile from the restaurant, where Mr. Holmes and other American officials met with a series of top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky. But when most of the group left, Mr. Sondland took aside Andriy Yermak, a top Zelensky aide, for a one-on-one meeting that Mr. Holmes was told he could not attend. |
Mr. Sondland agreed to take Mr. Holmes to lunch, where the two sat across from each other, drinking wine and eating an appetizer. At some point after discussing Mr. Sondland’s hotel business, Mr. Sondland tried calling Mr. Trump, several times announcing himself: “Gordon Sondland holding for the president.” |
Mr. Trump picked up the phone, talking so loudly that Mr. Sondland had to hold his cellphone away from his ear, letting Mr. Holmes in on the conversation. Mr. Holmes said he heard the president ask, “So he’s going to do the investigation?” to which Mr. Sondland replied that he would, adding that Mr. Zelensky “will do anything you ask him to do.” |
After the call, Mr. Holmes asked whether the president cared about Ukraine, and Mr. Sondland said he did not — “the president only cares about big stuff,” he said. Mr. Holmes noted that there was “big stuff” happening in Ukraine, like a war with Russia. But Mr. Sondland explained that he meant “big stuff” that benefits the president, like the “Biden investigation” that Rudy Giuliani was pushing. |
Mr. Holmes returned to the U.S. Embassy and immediately reported the call to his supervisor. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said today. |
- At a meeting today, White House aides and Senate Republicans were divided over whether to embrace a lengthy impeachment trial. Some Republicans are pushing for a quick trial to limit the political damage. Others want a deliberate one, which could force some Democrats running for president to choose between the trial and their campaigns.
- Also today, Senator Lindsey Graham sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting documents that could signal which witnesses Republicans might call during a trial, including communications involving Mr. Biden, his son Hunter Biden, officials from the Obama administration and the former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.
- The witnesses’ style choices over the past week presented some convenient battlefield symbolism fitting of the mood of the hearings, our fashion critic wrote.
- Mr. Holmes’s testimony made reference to ASAP Rocky. Wondering why the president was talking to his ambassador to the E.U. about a rapper from Harlem? Here’s an explainer The Times published back in July.
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