WASHINGTON (AP) – A former White House national security aide says a July 10 meeting of U.S. and Ukrainian officials was so alarming that her boss told her to call a lawyer.
Fiona Hill says a key moment was when European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland said he and Trump’s acting chief of staff had worked out a deal for Ukraine’s president. Under the deal, Volodymyr Zelenskiy would visit the White House in exchange for opening investigations.
Hill says her boss, national security adviser John Bolton, stiffened. She says it was “unmistakable body language that got my attention.”
He later told her to call a lawyer and make clear that “I am not part of whatever drug deal” that Sondland and Trump’s acting chief of staff were cooking up.
Hill says Ambassador Gordon Sondland was “being involved in a domestic political errand” while she and her team were “involved in national security policy.”
Hill told House impeachment investigators about a confrontation she had with Sondland about his role in Ukraine policy.
She says Sondland told him that President Donald Trump had put him in charge of Ukraine, and that that “shut me up.”
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee is asking witnesses about their familiarity with a dossier of opposition research compiled on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The research was gathered by Chris Steele, a former British spy who was paid by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign to look into Trump’s ties to Russia.
Rep. Devin Nunes raised the Steele dossier on Thursday with witnesses Fiona Hill and David Holmes.
Hill said that she did know Steele, who was her British counterpart when she served as a national intelligence officer from 2006 to 2009.
She also said she received a copy of his dossier the day before it was made public. It was given to her by a colleague at the Brooking Institution, where she worked at the time.
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