Impeachment Witness Fiona Hill Undermines Schiff By Admitting Russia Goes After Both Sides
The star witness of Thursday’s public impeachment hearings was Dr. Fiona Hill, a former official with the National Security Council who is an expert on Russia and European affairs.
Democrats and the media initially seized on Hill’s testimony, particularly her prepared opening statement, as they believed it was a direct rebuke to what Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have been bringing up repeatedly: that Ukraine worked to interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats against then-candidate Donald Trump, a claim borne out by the facts as reported by Politico in January 2017.
House Democrats have long claimed that the Russians interfered in order to help Trump. Hill completely undermined their narrative that the interference was solely in support of the president.
Speaking about Russian attacks on America’s “democratic institutions” in 2016, Hill said that “the impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.”
She went on to explain that Russia’s primary goal was, and always has been, to weaken America on the global stage in order to protect its own interests. And then she dropped a bomb on the Democratic narrative by revealing that Russia doesn’t choose sides in that continuing effort but seeks to sabotage the U.S. with whatever opportunity is presented, no matter which Americans it may help or hurt.
“President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC,” Hill said. “They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
“When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each other, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the ringleader of the impeachment circus, tried to tease out the Democratic narrative of Trump-Russia collusion in his questioning of Hill, but she essentially killed it right off the bat.
“The Russians’ interests [were], frankly, to delegitimize our entire presidency. … The goal of the Russians was really to put whoever became the president — by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale — under a cloud,” Hill said.
“So if Secretary, former first lady, former Sen. Clinton had been elected as president — as indeed many expected in the run-up prior to the election in 2016 — she, too, would have had major questions about her legitimacy,” she added.
“This is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for. If they seed misinformation, they seed doubt, they have everybody questioning the legitimacy of a presidential candidate, be it President Trump or potentially a President Clinton, that they would pit one side of our electorate against the other, that they would pit one party against the other.”
That strikes to the heart of the matter, a basic truth that far too many Democrats and media figures refuse to acknowledge. Russia didn’t side with Trump or Clinton in 2016 but attempted to harm and smear both so that whichever one ultimately prevailed would, theoretically, be weakened upon assuming the Oval Office.
Indeed, Russia played both sides of the field in 2016, and Russian actions both helped and hurt each candidate. Russia hurt Clinton by hacking her emails, but also helped her with the anti-Trump Steele Dossier.
In the big scheme of things, Russia doesn’t really care whether a Democrat or a Republican is in office. The sooner Democrats realize that and quit playing into Russian hands with their incessant anti-Trump divisiveness, the better off this whole country will be.
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