In her testimony Thursday as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, former national security official Fiona Hill debunked the “fictional narrative” of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Indeed, as The New York Times reports: “In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials.”
But anyone who watched Fox News’ prime-time coverage of the day’s events heard only a continued insistence on this narrative, which goes back to 2017 and a Politico article whose co-author says has been misinterpreted. While some staffers at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington and other Ukrainian individuals had been opposed to candidate Trump (who, keep in mind, had made pro-Russian comments regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine), that opposition did not compare to the official Russian government efforts to hack Democratic emails and otherwise assist Trump’s candidacy.
Early Thursday evening, The Five co-host Jesse Watters deemed Hill’s denial of the conspiracy theory evidence to disqualify her as an expert witness: “I mean, this is the reason Trump is dual-tracking diplomacy in Ukraine in the first place because of people like Fiona. Because Fiona doesn't even know there was Ukraine collusion.”