The final testimony of an extraordinary week of impeachment hearings came from a former White House national security adviser who wrote the book on Vladimir Putin — literally — and a political counsellor at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine who overheard a pivotal conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and EU ambassador Gordon Sondland.
Takeaways from Day 5 of the impeachment inquiry before the House intelligence committee:
‘FICTIONAL NARRATIVE’
The British-born Hill is a Russia expert who’s written extensively on the Kremlin, and she made that clear from the outset when she scolded Republicans lawmakers for propagating what she said was a “fictional narrative” — that somehow Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Those discredited theories have been advanced by Trump himself, who in a July 25 phone call at the centre of the impeachment inquiry asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate the possibility.
Hill said the unwillingness by some to accept Russia’s role has profound consequences at a time when Russia’s security services have “geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election.” Putin, she said, deploys millions of dollars to “weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.”
“When we are consumed by partisan rancour, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy,” Hill said.
At another point, she implored impeachment investigators — and the country at large — to stop advancing fictions that she said distract from the attention needed to fight Russian interference.
“In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” Hill said.
‘THE BIG STUFF’
The July 26 lunch on an outdoor terrace in a Kyiv restaurant started out social enough. There was a bottle of wine and affable chatter about marketing strategies for Sondland’s hotel business.
Then, according to David Holmes, a counsellor at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, Sondland said he was going to call Trump to give him an update. The conversation Holmes overheard was loud _ and memorable.
At one point, Holmes said, he heard Sondland tell Trump that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “loves your ass.”
“I then heard President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’ Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it.”’ He said Sondland told Trump that Zelenskiy will do “anything you ask him to.”
When the call ended, Holmes said he asked Sondland if it was true that Trump did not “give a s–t about Ukraine.” Sondland said that it was indeed the case.
“I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia, and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.” That was a reference to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who had been pushing for Ukraine investigations.
The account of the conversation largely lined up with Sondland’s own version, though Sondland testified Wednesday that he doesn’t remember discussing Biden with Trump.
TRUMP ON THE DEFENSIVE
Even before Hill’s testimony began Trump excoriated Democrats leading the impeachment inquiry.
In a series of tweets, Trump urged House Republican allies to “Keep fighting tough,” and told them they are “dealing with human scum who have taken Due Process and all of the Republican Party’s rights away from us during the most unfair hearings in American History.”
Still, Trump insisted, that “we are winning big” and warned that “they will soon be on our turf” — presumably a reference to the inquiry moving to the Senate, which Republicans control.
Trump has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and accused Democrats and the media of pursuing a “witch hunt” to damage him heading into 2020.
He claimed he and Republicans had “had a GREAT day” of testimony Wednesday, even though Sondland, his ambassador to the European Union, bolstered Democrats’ impeachment narrative as he repeatedly talked of a “quid pro quo” involving Ukraine. Yet Trump complained that, when he “got home to the White House & checked out the news coverage on much of television, you would have no idea they were reporting on the same event.”
“FAKE & CORRUPT NEWS!” he tweeted.
IMPEACHMENT
The House impeachment hearings may damage Trump politically, but the proceedings seem to be helping his party financially.
Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairwoman, told reporters Thursday at a Monitor Breakfast that the impeachment hearings are helping fuel a fundraising boom for GOP candidates.
The RNC raised more than $25 million in October alone, about triple the committee’s haul for the same month in 2017, she said.
In the first 24 hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry, the RNC brought in $5 million in small donor contributions online. The RNC raised another $3 million online on the first day of the hearings last week, McDaniel said.
“There has been an absolute influx of small donor donations,” McDaniel said.