- House investigators leading the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump are hearing testimony from Fiona Hill and David Holmes on Thursday.
- Hill, the former top Russia adviser on the National Security Council, in closed-door testimony already offered a scathing picture of shadowy efforts to urge Ukraine to investigate Trump's political rivals.
- Holmes is a top staffer at the US Embassy in Ukraine and worked closely with Marie Yovanovitch while she was serving as the US ambassador to Ukraine. He overheard a phone call with Trump relevant to the inquiry.
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Fiona Hill, the former director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council, and David Holmes, a top staffer at the US Embassy in Ukraine, are testifying before House investigators Thursday for the public impeachment hearings into President Donald Trump.
Watch the hearing here:
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In her testimony, Hill recounted a very tense July 10 White House meeting in which Sondland emphasized he had an agreement with Mulvaney to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into Burisma.
In an episode Hill also described in her closed-door October 14 deposition, Hill said that Bolton "stiffened" when Sondland raised the prospect of Ukraine announcing an investigation into Burisma in exchange for a White House meeting.
After Bolton abruptly ended the meeting, Hill said she tried to intercept Sondland and make clear to him there should be no discussion of investigations with Ukranian officials.
Hill testified that when she recounted the conversation with Sondland to Bolton, he told her to report it to NSC counsel John Eisenberg immediately, saying, "You go and tell Eisenberg that I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this."
Hill also defended the ousted Ambassador Yovanovitch, saying the way Yovanovitch was "smeared and attacked" was "shameful."
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Hill: "I had already brought to Bolton's attention the attacks, the smear campaign against Amb. Yovanovitch and expressed great regret about how this was unfolding and, in fact, the shameful way in which Amb. Yovanovitch was being smeared and attacked."https://t.co/hsjAHbktujpic.twitter.com/wfKFjoLSLu
Hill said she was "shocked and saddened" to read the White House's notes of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky call, and see that Trump had brought up the Biden investigations.
Hill left the White House on July 19, six days before the call took place. She also said there was "no basis" for the theory Trump pushed on the July 25 Zelensky call that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.
On the July 25 call, Trump also referenced a discredited conspiracy — also heavily pushed by Giuliani — that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and that Ukraine was somehow in possession of a DNC server.
"I would like you to do us a favor though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people ... The server, they say Ukraine has it," Trump said on the call.
In the call, Trump was referencing the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which the DNC retained to help them respond to Russia's breach of its servers during the 2016 election. In reality, there is no single, physical DNC server, and there is no evidence that Ukraine's government "hid" it from investigators or was in any way involved in the 2016 US presidential election.
In her opening statement, Dr. Fiona Hill slammed the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election as "a fictional narrative" that plays into Russian hands.
"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. These fictions are harmful even if used for domestic purposes," Hill said.
She added: "The Russians have a vested interest in undermining Ukraine," and that the Russian government was "hoping for" a situation that would "put one side of our electorate against the other."
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Fiona Hill addressed Republican members of Congress promoting the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election: "This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves."pic.twitter.com/1czUtCeWVT
Holmes recalled overhearing a July 26 phone call between Sondland and Trump where Trump asked if Zelensky would do "the investigations" into Burisma, and Sondland confirmed he would.
Holmes also testified that Sondland told Trump that Zelensky "loves your ass," and that Trump and Sondland further discussed rapper A$AP Rocky's detention in Sweden.
Holmes said he could clearly hear Trump's voice and the two men were "clearly addressing" Holmes' area of expertise, with Sondland making it clear that
Holmes also said that Sondland told him that Trump cared about "big stuff" in Ukraine as it related to the Bidens, and not major national security issues, like the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.
Holmes later said that he learned the aid freeze was intended to express Trump's dissatisfaction with the lack of investigations into Burisma, and Zelensky was set to "commit on a cable news channel to a specific investigation of President Trump's political rival "just days after the hold on the aid ended up being lifted.
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#DavidHolmes testifies that he was "shocked" that Trump's emissaries made such a "specific demand" that President Zelensky give an interview on CNN to commit publicly "to investigate President Trump's political rival," Joe Biden. #ImpeachmentHearings
Holmes said he was "shocked" to learn during a meeting on July 18 that the US had placed a hold on a previously appropriated aid package to Ukraine.
He added: "the order to freeze aid came from the president and had been conveyed to OMB by Mr. Mulvaney, with no further explanation," referring to acting White House chief of staff and former OMB Director Mick Mulvaney.
Holmes said that when the transcript of the July 25 Trump-Zelensky call was publicly released on September 25, said he was "deeply disappointed" to learn that Trump had not raised any of the US' security priorities in the call.
Holmes also recalled US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland complaining about Giuliani's interference and saying, "Dammnit Rudy, every time Rudy gets involved he f--- everything up."
Holmes described in detail how Sondland, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and former US special representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker— termed "the three amigos"— committed themselves to securing a White House meeting between Trump and Zelensky.
Holmes confirmed that it was "made clear" that Ukraine announcing investigations into Burisma was a necessary precondition for a White House meeting, but Holmes said he became increasingly worried that a meeting in which the US did not express sufficient support for Ukraine would be "worse than no meeting at all."
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U.S. diplomat in Ukraine David Holmes: "It became apparent that Mr. Giuliani was having a direct influence on the foreign policy agenda that the 'Three Amigos' were executing on the ground in Ukraine."https://t.co/3BHb2Irq0t#ImpeachmentHearingspic.twitter.com/aTk4DY0hGl
In his opening statement, diplomat David Holmes praised former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch's "dedication, determination, decency, and professionalism"
Holmes is a career foreign service officer who currently works as the director of political affairs at the US Embassy in Kyiv.
In his opening statement, he praised former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, a veteran diplomat who was suddenly recalled from her position this spring, and described how Trump's personal attorney became involved in US-Ukraine policy and ousted Yovanovitch.
Holmes testified that the US' diplomatic and security interests in Ukraine "became overshadowed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a cadre of officials with a direct channel to the White House," Holmes said, then describing how former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutensko spread smears and false allegations against Yovanovitch.
"The barrage of allegations directed at Ambassador Yovanovitch, a career ambassador, is unlike anything I've ever seen in my professional career," Holmes said.
What Hill and Holmes testified to behind closed doors
Hill was the top adviser on Russia in the White House until she left the administration over the summer.
Her testimony could offer the clearest picture of how the national security adviser John Bolton responded to shadow efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations into Trump's rivals. Bolton, who has refused to testify, was apparently disconcerted by these efforts, according to Hill's closed-door testimony.
The Russia expert testified privately that Bolton, who exited the White House in early September, once said he didn't want to be part of whatever "drug deal" the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, were "cooking up" with regard to Ukraine.
Bolton did not initially realize the extent to which Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was involved in these matters, Hill said.
Hill said Bolton described Giuliani as a "hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up" and instructed her to communicate with the NSC's lawyer about the efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch the investigations.
She offered a particularly scathing assessment of the smear campaign that ultimately led Marie Yovanovitch to be removed as the US ambassador to Ukraine.
Yovanovitch's removal was a "result of the campaign that Mr. Giuliani had set in motion," Hill testified. She said there was "no basis" for removing Yovanovitch.
The impeachment inquiry spiraled out of a whistleblower complaint that centered on a July 25 phone call in which Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden as well as a baseless conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.
The White House released a memo that summarized the call. Hill said she was "very shocked" and "very saddened" when she read the memo.
Hill is a widely respected academic and expert on Europe and Russia, directing the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution from 2009 to 2017. She began working in the Trump administration in April 2017 and also served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council from 2006 to 2009.
Holmes, who testified to House investigators in a closed-door hearing last week, was a last-minute addition to the list of witnesses in this week's impeachment inquiry schedule. As a top staffer at the US Embassy in Ukraine, he's worked closely with Yovanovitch as well as another key impeachment witness — the acting US ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor.
In his closed-door testimony, Holmes told House investigators that he overheard Sondland mention investigations in a July 26 phone call with Trump, which was one day after the call with Zelensky that prompted the whistleblower complaint. He was sitting with Sondland at a restaurant in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv at the time of the call.
Holmes testified that he overheard Sondland tell Trump that Zelensky "loves your ass" and that the Ukrainian president planned to move forward with "the investigation."
"I then heard President Trump ask, 'So, he's gonna do the investigation?' Ambassador Sondland replied that 'he's gonna do it,' adding that President Zelensky will do 'anything you ask him to,'" Holmes said.