Andrew McCarthy wrote a great article today explaining why Fiona Hill is wrong about Ukraine meddling in the 2016 election:
NY POST – In her testimony before the House impeachment inquiry, Fiona Hill, formerly of the National Security Council, took great pride in telling lawmakers she was a nonpartisan intelligence professional. She then labored mightily in service of a Democratic political narrative.
Specifically, Hill conflated two separate theories of Ukrainian collusion in the 2016 election. One of these is discredited, the other is quite viable. Hill helped the Democrats suggest that they have both been debunked.
McCarthy notes that there is one Ukraine theory that has been discredited, one that Trump has helped to propagate:
To be sure, President Trump is largely to blame for propagating the discredited Ukraine theory. It holds that, somehow, it was Ukraine, rather than Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election by cyber-espionage against Democratic email accounts.
This is such a loopy theory, it defies clear explanation. Suffice it to say that it involves suspicions that a hacked DNC server is hidden in Ukraine. Perhaps, the speculation runs, it was Ukrainian operatives, not Russian ones, who were the culprits.
It is a fringe theory. No one who has closely followed the collusion caper puts any stock in it. Regrettably, the president is a hospitable audience for frivolous theories that cast doubt on Russia’s culpability, which he wrongly fears casts doubt on his legitimacy.
We all saw, via the transcript, that Trump mentioned this to Zelensky in his July 25th call. And McCarthy notes that Hill is right to say that this theory makes Russia very happy because it undermines relations between the US and Ukraine.
But as McCarthy suggested above, Hill is acting as if this is the only theory of Ukrainian collusion when it is not. There is a second theory of Ukrainian collusion that he describes above as “farm more viable”:
The second theory has nothing to do with Russia. It is supported by significant evidence. It includes public professions of support for Clinton and opposition to Trump by Ukrainian officials. It includes acknowledgments by Ukrainian investigators that their Obama administration counterparts encouraged them to investigate Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Bolstering this theory is the fact that Ukrainian officials leaked information damaging to Manafort (a ledger of payments, possibly fabricated) that forced Manafort’s ouster from the Trump campaign, triggering waves of negative publicity for the campaign.
A Ukrainian court, in late 2018, concluded that two Ukrainian officials meddled in the election. And in 2018 House testimony, Nellie Ohr — who worked for Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign opposition research firm that produced the lurid and discredited Steele dossier — conceded that a pro-Clinton Ukrainian legislator was a Fusion informant.
When Republicans and most Trump supporters refer to evidence of Ukrainian collusion in the 2016 election, it is this collusion theory that they are speaking about. This theory is in no way mutually exclusive with the finding that Russia hacked the DNC accounts — it has nothing to do with the hacking.
There is nothing illogical in believing both that Russia hacked the Democrats and that Ukraine supported the Democrats.
McCarthy finishes up by calling out Hill’s obfuscation of this theory:
Hill’s testimony aimed at obfuscating this viable theory of Ukrainian collusion, implying that it had been debunked and that to consider it is to lend aid and comfort to Russia, notwithstanding that many people who credit the Ukrainian collusion theory are more reliably hawkish on Russia than Democrats have been over the last 30 years — I included.
Hill even suggested that talk of Ukrainian collusion is the cause of the bitter divisiveness in American politics. Nonsense. The divisiveness is mostly attributable to an obsessively pursued but never credible and now-debunked theory that Trump conspired with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election.
Critics of the Trump-Russia “collusion” theory don’t believe, and have never contended, that Ukraine hacked the Democrats. But that hardly means Ukrainian officials didn’t try to put their thumbs on the scale for Clinton.
This is another reason Fiona Hill’s credibility took a hit after today’s hearing. She wants to come across as a non-partisan public servant, but as soon as she opens her mouth it becomes quite evident that she is not.