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Key Moments From Hill and Holmes’s Testimony in the Impeachment Inquiry
What to Watch For in Day 5 of the Trump Impeachment Hearings
(25 days later)
Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, said President Trump’s demands for Ukraine to announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the 2016 elections amounted to a “domestic political errand” that diverged from American foreign policy goals.
The final House impeachment hearing of the week gets underway Thursday morning with joint testimony by Fiona Hill, a former Europe and Russia expert at the White House, and David Holmes, an embassy official in Kyiv.
Her testimony made it clear that Dr. Hill, a longtime Russia expert, saw the pressure campaign on Ukraine as a purely political effort that had nothing to do with confronting corruption in Ukraine, the explanation that Mr. Trump and Republicans have frequently given for his actions.
Ms. Hill is expected to describe her concerns about the Ukraine pressure campaign and those of John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser. Mr. Holmes will be asked about a cellphone conversation he overheard in which President Trump asked an ambassador about investigations he wanted Ukraine to announce.
Under questioning from the top Republican counsel on the House Intelligence Committee, Dr. Hill said she confronted Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union about his failure to coordinate with other members of the administration and later realized he was “being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security, foreign policy.”
Who: Ms. Hill and Mr. Holmes will testify during a morning session. There is no afternoon session scheduled.
Dr. Hill said she had told Mr. Sondland at the time that, “this is all going to blow up. And here we are.”
What: The House Intelligence Committee, led by its chairman, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, will continue to examine the case for impeaching Mr. Trump. The Republican minority, led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, will again work to poke holes in testimony implicating the president.
Dr. Hill criticized Republicans on Thursday for propagating a “fictional narrative” embraced by President Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 elections.
When and Where: The morning proceedings start at 9 Eastern in the House Ways and Means Committee chambers. It will most likely last until the afternoon.
In an implicit rebuke to the president she once served, she argued that the story was planted by Russia and dangerously played into Moscow’s hands, by sowing political divisions in the United States that adversaries are eager to exploit.
How to Watch: The New York Times will stream the testimony live, and a team of reporters in Washington will provide real-time context and analysis of the events on Capitol Hill. Follow along at nytimes.com, starting a few minutes before 9.
“These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” said Dr. Hill, the co-author of a 500-page book analyzing the psyche of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Ms. Hill is expected to testify that Mr. Bolton expressed serious concerns about the pressure campaign on Ukraine led by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who was pushing Ukraine to investigate Democrats. In previous, closed-door testimony, she described a July 10 White House meeting during which Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, raised the investigations in front of Ukrainian officials and said there was a deal to grant their new president a White House meeting with Mr. Trump if he agreed to announce them.
“President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC,” Dr. Hill explained. “They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, 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.
Disturbed, Mr. Bolton abruptly ended the meeting and instructed Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers about what Mr. Sondland, Mr. Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, were up to. Mr. Bolton told Ms. Hill that he was not “part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” she testified. Later, Ms. Hill said that Mr. Bolton told her that “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”
The impeachment inquiry centers on the accusation that Mr. Trump withheld a White House visit for Ukraine’s president and security aid for the country as leverage to push the government to announce investigations into Mr. Biden, and the claim that Ukraine conspired to help Democrats in the 2016 election.
Mr. Sondland said in Wednesday’s hearing that Ms. Hill’s account of the July 10 meeting does not “square with my own.”
Dr. Hill called the claim about Ukraine’s interference a fake story invented by Russian intelligence services to destabilize the United States.
Mr. Holmes will testify that he overheard a phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland during a lunch in Kyiv. In closed-door testimony, Mr. Holmes told lawmakers last week that he overheard Mr. Trump, who was speaking loudly, asking Mr. Sondland whether Mr. Zelensky was “going to do the investigation.” Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier and political donor turned ambassador, told Mr. Trump that Mr. Zelensky “loves your ass” and would conduct the investigation and do “anything you ask him to,” according to Mr. Holmes’s statement.
David Holmes, a top aide in the United States Embassy in Kyiv, told lawmakers on Thursday that he became convinced by the end of August that Mr. Trump had frozen security aid for Ukraine because he was seeking to pressure the country to commit to an investigation into Mr. Biden.
In Mr. Holmes’s account, Mr. Sondland told him that Mr. Trump cares only about “big stuff that benefits the president” like the “Biden investigation” into the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Sondland largely confirmed that account on Wednesday but said he did not recall specifically mentioning Mr. Biden. Democrats believe the conversation helps establish that the president was preoccupied with persuading Ukraine to publicly commit to investigations that Mr. Trump wanted.
“By this point,” Mr. Holmes said, “my clear impression was that the security assistance hold was likely intended by the president either as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Ukrainians who had not yet agreed to the Burisma/Biden investigation or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so.”
Both witnesses have already appeared for closed-door depositions in the inquiry. Read transcripts or key excerpts from their testimony here: Ms. Hill, Mr. Holmes.
Burisma is a Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, on its board.
Mr. Trump repeatedly pressured Mr. Zelensky to investigate people and issues of political concern to Mr. Trump, including the former vice president. Here’s a timeline of events since January.
Both Mr. Holmes and Dr. Hill said it was clear that mentions of Burisma by Mr. Trump, Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, or others were clearly references to the investigations that the president wanted Ukraine to announce.
A C.I.A. officer who was once detailed to the White House filed a whistle-blower complaint on Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Zelensky. Read the complaint.
Kurt D. Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine, and Mr. Sondland both testified that they believed Burisma was merely a reference to the need to eliminate corruption in Ukraine, given the history of corruption at the company.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House would open a formal impeachment proceeding in response to the whistle-blower’s complaint. Here’s how the impeachment process works, and here’s why political influence in foreign policy matters.
But both witnesses on Thursday said unequivocally that Burisma was “code” for the Bidens, and that anyone working on Ukraine issues would know that. Asked whether “anyone involved in Ukraine matters in the spring and summer would understand that as well,” Mr. Holmes had a one-word answer.
House committees have issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the budget office and other agencies for documents related to the impeachment investigation. Here’s the evidence that has been collected so far.
“Yes,” he said.
Read about the Democrats’ rules to govern impeachment proceedings.\
Dr. Hill described an awkward White House meeting with Ukrainian officials on July 10 that ended abruptly after Mr. Sondland discussed pressing Ukraine to investigate Democrats in exchange for a White House meeting for the country’s new president.
Dr. Hill testified that after the meeting ended, Mr. Sondland explained precisely what he was up to: “That he had an agreement with chief of staff Mulvaney that in return for investigations this meeting would get scheduled.”
When she told John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, about that exchange, Dr. Hill testified, he instructed her to tell the National Security Council’s top lawyer about what Mr. Sondland, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Mulvaney were up to, and say that, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up.”
“I took it to mean investigations for a meeting,” Dr. Hill added, when asked what Mr. Bolton meant by “drug deal.”
Later, Dr. Hill said that Mr. Bolton told her that “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.” She understood that to refer to Mr. Giuliani’s “incendiary remarks” on television about Ukraine, and that he was “pushing views that would come back to haunt us.”
“In fact,” she added, “I think that’s where we are today.”
Mr. Holmes provided the first public testimony about a now-infamous July cellphone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland, a conversation that Democrats believe establishes that the president was preoccupied with persuading Ukraine to publicly commit to investigations that benefited him politically.
He told lawmakers that he could hear Mr. Trump, who was speaking loudly, asking Mr. Sondland whether Mr. Zelensky was “going to do the investigation.” Mr. Sondland told Mr. Trump that Mr. Zelensky “loves your ass,” and would conduct the investigation and do “anything you ask him to,” Mr. Holmes said.
In Mr. Holmes’s account, Mr. Sondland later told him that Mr. Trump cared only about “big stuff that benefits the president” like the “Biden investigation.” Mr. Sondland did not dispute that account when he testified on Wednesday, but said he did not recall specifically mentioning Mr. Biden.
Representative Mike Turner of Ohio laced into Dr. Hill, using his time during Thursday’s hearing to lecture her, rather than question her and taking issue with her assertion that some Republicans denied that Russians interfered in the 2016 elections.
In her opening statement, Dr. Hill had said that “based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country.”
Mr. Turner took issue with that statement, calling it a “little small” on her part.
“Dr. Hill, you have provided me probably the greatest piece of evidence that’s before us to illustrate the problem with hearsay,” Mr. Turner said, pointing her to a Republican report that acknowledged Russian meddling in the election. “Dr. Hill, no matter how much we believe we know that what we’ve heard is true, it is still just what we’ve heard.”
Mr. Turner also criticized Mr. Holmes for testifying that Mr. Sondland told the president that Mr. Zelensky “loves your ass” during a telephone call in Kyiv. Mr. Turner said that Mr. Holmes should not have used that phrase in his testimony about the call.
“It was anecdotal, it was extraneous,” Mr. Turner said. “Your interests in protecting Ukraine are very dubious when you embarrass President Zelensky by making those statements you didn’t have to make. Who cares that Ambassador Sondland said that?”
Mr. Turner did not ask a question for either Dr. Hill or Mr. Holmes to answer, nor did two others Republicans who used their five minutes to issue critical statements.
A few minutes later, under questioning from a Democratic lawmaker, Dr. Hill got the chance to respond to the speechifying. She described herself as a nonpartisan Russia expert who was appearing before the committee without an agenda.
“We are here to relate to you what we heard, what we saw and what we did and to be of some help to all of you in really making a very momentous decision here,” Dr. Hill said. “We are not the people who make that decision.”
Mr. Trump followed the day’s testimony, repeatedly retweeting Republican members of the committee who complained about the impeachment process and insisting that the president had done nothing wrong.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump took aim at Mr. Holmes’s credibility even as he began testifying, suggesting there was no way he could have heard what he claimed to have picked up the cellphone conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland.
The call is an important piece of evidence because it demonstrates that Mr. Trump was directing members of his administration to push the Ukrainians for the investigations, but the president on Thursday sought to cast doubt on its authenticity.
Even before the day’s hearing began, the president posted a string of angry tweets about Democrats and the impeachment investigation.
The Democrats leading the impeachment investigation are “human scum,” he said.
The public hearings over the last week are “the most unfair hearings in American History.” And, “never in my wildest dreams” did he think his name would be linked to the “ugly word, Impeachment!”
Mr. Trump also revived his complaints about the special counsel investigation into whether his campaign or aides were involved in Russia’s election interference.
