Fiona Hill, a U.S. national security official who specializes in European and Russian affairs, testified for nearly 10 hours on Monday before House committees overseeing the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. Hill’s testimony was apparently mind-blowing for the legislators. In an interview after the marathon sessions, Rep. Denny Heck, who returned to D.C. from his home state of Washington for the hearing, said Hill was an outstanding witness. Heck said that Hill displayed an “eidetic memory, near total recall” and that, “after thousands of hours of hearings, I have never had a witness that came across as substantive per minute as she did.”
So what did Fiona Hill have to say during more than nine hours of substantive testimony to the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees? According to The New York Times, she described several crimes in motion, directed by Donald Trump and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, but some of her most jarring testimony related to former national security adviser John Bolton, who apparently went apoplectic when he heard Trump instruct State Department personnel to run everything Ukraine-related through his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Hill testified that Bolton instructed her to take their concerns immediately to the chief lawyer for the National Security Council. According to the Times, Hill’s recollection of Bolton’s statements were damning for Trump and his corrupt crew: “’I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,’ Mr. Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, told Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to two people at the deposition. (Another person in the room initially said Mr. Bolton referred to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Mulvaney, but two others said he cited [U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon] Sondland.)”
Bolton was revolted by Giuliani’s involvement in aid for Ukraine, calling him a “hand grenade.” The Times noted, “It was not the first time Mr. Bolton expressed grave concerns to Ms. Hill about the campaign being run by Mr. Giuliani. ‘Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,’ Ms. Hill quoted Mr. Bolton as saying during an earlier conversation.”
This morning, Giuliani responded to his old friend.
Other than these statements and the commentary from Heck, the core of Hill’s nine hours of testimony remains unknown to the general public and presumably to the targets of the growing corruption and criminal conspiracy investigation. Many have speculated that one of the reasons for the closed-door testimony is so that future interviewees will not be able to read the transcript of Hill’s testimony to tighten up or align their own stories. It will be up to each interviewee to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
As the people ensnared in this scandal get their chance to testify under oath to the committees, there is little doubt that this is about to get much, much worse for Donald Trump. Gordon Sondland is up next, and the uber-wealthy Trump donor who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee to secure his ambassadorship (a practice that must end for both parties) is not the kind of chap who seems willing to do prison time for Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani. It’s about to be every man and woman for themselves on the sinking USS Trump.
Buckle up.
Here’s that commentary from Rep. Heck on Fiona Hill’s testimony. You can read more about Hill’s testimony from my colleague, Mark Sumner, who writes that Fiona Hill’s testimony draws a line through the White House and sets up a key confrontation.