trump impeachment

Read Fiona Hill’s Opening Statement in Thursday’s Impeachment Hearing

Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The seventh day of public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump began Thursday with testimony from witnesses Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official specializing in Russia, and David Holmes, a staffer at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine.

In her opening statement, Hill is expected to rip into Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee for indulging in the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“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 and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” she says. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Read the full statement below:

Read Fiona Hill’s Opening Statement in Thursday’s Hearing