US President Donald Trump's former Russia adviser Fiona Hill is to warn Congress' impeachment inquiry against promoting falsehoods minimising Russia's attempts to interfere in US elections.
According to her prepared testimony, Hill says she has heard questions and statements from members of the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee apparently showing they believe Russia did not conduct a campaign against the United States during the 2016 presidential race.
"This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves," Hill, who was until July director for European and Russian Affairs at the White House National Security Council, will say.
Some Republican members of the committee have advanced a discredited conspiracy theory, embraced by Republican President Trump, that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the last presidential election.
"In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically-driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests," she will say.
Hill will warn intelligence committee members that Russia is gearing up to repeat its election interference activities in 2020.
"We are running out of time to stop them," she will say.
Like a number of career government officials who have already testified, Hill prides herself as a non-partisan foreign policy expert who has served Republican and Democratic Presidents.
A naturalised US citizen, Hill describes herself as an "American by choice", tracing her poor family's roots to the same area of England as George Washington.
Thursday's public impeachment hearing marks the last scheduled day of marathon sessions by the House Intelligence Committee focused on whether Trump wrongfully pressured Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat bidding to face Trump in 2020.
In prior testimony, Hill recounted a July 10 meeting in Washington she attended with senior Ukrainian and US officials at which the investigation was discussed.
Reuters
