US Democrats hold last scheduled public hearing on Trump’s impeachment inquiry

World Today

Fiona Hill was until recently at the heart of White House policy-making on Ukraine. The Russia expert who wrote a book on the psyche of President Vladimir Putin told lawmakers that theories that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election were a Moscow-backed conspiracy.

CGTN’s Nathan King reports.

“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, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” Hill said.

Fiona Hill, the Former White House Adviser on Russia and Europe then described what we’ve heard all week from impeachment witnesses — a separate Ukraine policy emanating from the White House that sought to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

David Holmes, a career diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev said he any many others were aware of this campaign running counter to agreed U.S. foreign policy.

He then described a conversation with U.S.- EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland about President Trump’s attitude to Ukraine.

“I then took the opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland for his candid impression of the president’s views on Ukraine in particular. I asked Ambassador Sondland if it was true that the president did not give a expletive about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland that agreed that the president did not give an expletive about Ukraine. I asked why not Ambassador Sondland stated the president only cares about big stuff. I noted there was big stuff going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia and Ambassador Sondland silent replied that he meant big stuff that benefits the president like the Biden investigation. That Mr. Giuliani was pushing,” Holmes said.

Both witnesses expressed extreme discomfort with what they saw heard and witnessed covering U.S. policy on Ukraine – Holmes said he’d “never seen anything”, like the Trump-Gordon phone call.

These two witnesses were the last of nine heard this week and brings to an end, for now, public testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, we could hear from more witnesses or the process could move forward to the formal drafting of articles of impeachment against a U.S. president.