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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House Republican counsel Stephen Castor began questioning David Holmes by asserting that his "40-minute" opening statement he knows quite a lot about the president's dealings with Ukraine.
It's not exactly clear how this undermines anything Mr Holmes said in his opening statement.
Fiona Hill directly contradicts Gordon Sondland's testimony, saying former National Security Adviser John Bolton "was not in agreement" about wanting a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "at that point".
Fiona Hill notes that while Donald Trump has "the perfect right" to remove any diplomat of his choice, she found it "completely unnecessary" to disparage her reputation and that she was "very concerned" about how she had been "maligned".
Some perspective from The Independent's Andrew Feinberg as he watches the impeachment hearings unfold in the room:
Fiona "Hill just poured cold water on the Republican obsession with claiming that the decision to provide Javelin missiles to Ukraine is evidence of Trump’s lack of ill intent (with a bonus of being a way to criticize former president Obama). Hill says the Ukrainians weren’t well-trained enough to use them in 2015."
Fiona Hill says she did not believe US-Ukraine policy was "headed in the right direction" during her last day in her post as the former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council.
Republican Devin Nunes is again espousing misleading statements about a "black ledger", causing David Holmes to completely refute his theory:
Fiona Hill has expressed her concerns about the president's dealings involving Ukraine from her time in office, while continuing to speak out about former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch:
"I was concerned about two things ... One was, again, the removal of our ambassador ... On the second front, it was very clear at this point there was, let's just say, a different channel in operation in relation to Ukraine, one that was domestic and political in nature."
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham has just released the following statement about today's impeachment hearings:
"As has been the case throughout the Democrats' impeachment sham, today's witnesses rely heavily on their own presumptions, assumptions and opinions. These two witnesses, just like the rest, have no personal or direct knowledge regarding why U.S. aid was temporarily withheld. The Democrats' are clearly being motivated by a sick hatred for President Trump and their rabid desire to overturn the 2016 election. The American people deserve better."
Fiona Hill says Gordon Sondland "perhaps conflated" two meetings together when he suggested the two had coffee before she left her position. A note from The Independent's Andrew Feinberg as he watches the hearings in the room:
Most of these questions from Devin Nunes are not meant to elicit any facts from the witnesses. They’re a way for Nunes to talk about Hunter Biden and Burisma as much as possible so as to create moments that can be shared on social media.
Fiona Hill says she was "upset" and "angry" with Gordon Sondland for not telling officials involved in US-Ukraine policy what meetings he was having, saying he "was being involved in a domestic political errand".
She added: "What we were trying to do was block [Sondland] from straying into domestic, personal politics.”
She also said that her frustration was seemingly taken as emotional distress, as she says happens often to women when they express their anger.
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