MOSCOW, Oct 15: Fiona Hill, US President Donald Trump’s former adviser on Russia, has testified before three committees of the House of Representatives as part of the impeachment probe, media reported, citing sources.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Hill said she and some other White House officials were so alarmed over the effort to urge Kiev to open investigations against Hunter Biden, the son of 2020 presidential hopeful and former Vice President Joe Biden, that they shared their concerns with a lawyer.
Hill, who left the administration in August after over two years in office, testified for around nine hours. She described in detail a meeting, held on July 10 and attended by her, top Ukrainian officials, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton and other representatives of the US administration. According to Hill, it was during that meeting that US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland raised the issue of investigations.
After that, several people present at the meeting referred to the investigation that could implicate the Bidens. According to Hill, she and Bolton left the meeting over concerns about what could be transpired then, and Bolton recommended her to discuss the matter with John Eisenberg, the National Security Council lawyer.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that Hill had told the panels that Sondland had been coordinating his effort with Mick Mulvaney, acting White House Chief of Staff. Hill also reportedly described the attempts by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to force Ukraine to launch a probe into the Bidens in circumvention of the US governmental foreign policy-related procedures.
In September, House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump over his July 25 telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which the US leader tried to press Kiev to probe the business interests of Hunter Biden, who was linked to Ukrainian energy company Burisma. A whistleblower claimed that the White House had attempted to restrict access to the transcript of the call and described it as Trump’s attempt to solicit a foreign power’s interference in the 2020 presidential election.
(AGENCIES)
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