Trump impeachment news: Witness warns of Russian 'fictional narrative' in damning testimony as Republican conspiracy theories challenged
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Your support makes all the difference.The fifth day of public impeachment hearings has come and gone, with another pair of key witnesses delivering damning evidence against Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the president spent his time lashing out against the proceedings on Twitter, writing: “Never in my wildest dreams thought my name would in any way be associated with the ugly word, Impeachment!”
Mr Trump has had a more controversial week than usual, as his EU ambassador, Gordon Sondland, implicated the president in a quid pro quo with Ukraine during his own impeachment hearings - along with vice president Mike Pence, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. “Was there a ‘quid pro quo’?" Mr Sondland said in his opening statement. "As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes."
The president's critics have said the proceedings are exposing impeachable offences, including ex-White House ethics lawyer Richard W Painter, who said it was effectively “game over” for his administration. Mr Trump has attempted to undermine the inquiry, insisting that he barely knew his ambassador and wanted “NOTHING” from Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev. As all that happened, the Democratic 2020 contenders took to the debate stage in Georgia to attack Mr Trump as "one of the most corrupt presidents" in US history.
During the Thursday testimony, Fiona Hill, a former White House adviser on Ukraine, and David Holmes, a top staffer at the US embassy in Ukraine, testified about the irregular channel of communication in which Mr Trump pushed for a domestic-ally oriented political investigation.
Ms Hill told investigators that she believed Republican arguments claiming that it was OK for Mr Trump to ask for an investigation into Ukraine's 2016 role played into Russian talking points, and that furtherance of that played into their hands.
Mr Homes, meanwhile, told investigators that he was on the phone call that allegedly occurred 26 July, just a day after Mr Trump's call with Mr Zelensky. He said that he could hear the president speaking, even though he was not on spearker phone.
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Here's The Independent's Clark Mindock with more on Fiona Hill's testimony expertly refuting conspiracy theories that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election - a conspiracy supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
David Holmes is directly linking Donald Trump to the timeline of events leading up to the demands for political investigations from Ukraine:
David Holmes begins to lay out how exactly he managed to hear the phone call between Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Donald Trump, in which the president reportedly asked about whether his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky would "do the investigations" -
"When the president came on, he sort of winced and held the phone away from his ear like this. And he did that for the first couple exchanges."
Fiona Hill says she would not like to talk about the phone call between Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland, citing executive privilege.
Democratic House counsel Daniel Goldman encourages Ms Hill to discuss the call, and notes that it has been declassified. Ms Hill says "it became very clear ... that the White House meeting was being predicated" on other issues, including the investigations in question.
Ohio Republican Jim Jordan has also left the room where the impeachment hearings are being held, The Independent's Andrew Feinberg notes.
Fiona Hill says the conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 presidential election "is a view that President Putin and Russian security services...have promoted...that has gotten some traction in the United States.”
David Holmes also notes that Russia endorses the conspiracy theory because it allows the Kremlin to "deflect" from its own attempts of intervening in the election.
The Independent's Andrew Feinberg notes that Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan have returned to the room where the impeachment hearings are being held.
Here's video of Fiona Hill laying out the facts about 2016 presidential election interference -
David Holmes says that he believes the Ukrainians were aware that Rudy Giuliani "represented the president's views" as he pushed for an investigation.
Fiona Hill also says Mr Giuliani was seeking to connect the Bidens to Burisma. She said of the president's personal attorney: "He was frequently on television, making quite incendiary remarks about everyone involved in this. He was clearly pushing forward issues and ideas that would probably come back to haunt us. And in fact, I think that that's where we are today."
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