WASHINGTON _ The former top Russia adviser at the White House at impeachment hearings Thursday criticized one of Rep. Devin Nunes' defenses of President Donald Trump, calling the congressman's repeated assertion that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election a "fictional narrative."
"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," Fiona Hill testified. "This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves."
She called Russia's interference in the 2016 election "beyond dispute" and asked committee members to "please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests."
"As I told this committee last month, 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 concluded on that point.
Nunes, R-Calif., has frequently asserted that Trump wanted to pressure Ukraine because he believed the county interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Other witnesses have said they have heard nothing about those claims and there is no evidence to support them.
"What is the full extent of Ukraine's election meddling against the Trump campaign?" Nunes has asked witnesses throughout the hearings, suggesting that Democrats cooperated in that election meddling.
Nunes, as the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, is the main questioner for Republicans during impeachment. He has the chance to make opening statements, undertake extended questioning and give closing statements in each hearing, providing him significantly more time than other Republicans.
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to "denigrate" Clinton and "undermine faith" in the democratic process. Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the election led to 34 criminal indictments, including against 12 Russian nationals who allegedly attempted to hack Democratic Party servers to influence the 2016 election.
Trump is accused of pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to publicly announce he was investigating former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. About $400 million in aid to Ukraine was withheld while U.S. officials pushed Ukrainian officials for those investigations.
Nunes, who saw Hill's opening testimony before the hearing, responded to her assertions in his opening statement.
"As I noted in my opening statement on Wednesday, in March 2018 Intelligence Committee Republicans published a yearlong investigation into Russian election meddling," Nunes said, holding up a copy of the thick report.
"Republicans feel we should take meddling seriously from all foreign countries, regardless of which party they support," he added.
House Intelligence Committee Republicans said in the report that they found "no evidence" of coordination between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. The summary also said that the committee agreed with a number of the intelligence community's prior judgments on the matter, "except with respect to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's supposed preference for candidate Trump."
Democrats did not sign off on the report for those reasons. Mueller later concluded there was not evidence of coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, but that Russian interference had favored Trump.
Nunes has asked other witnesses in the impeachment inquiry if they have heard that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. None have affirmed they had heard evidence of such interference, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman pushed back in a similar way to Hill, calling it a "Russian narrative."
