Impeachment witness confronts Devin Nunes’ Ukraine argument, calls it a ‘fictional narrative’

The former top Russia adviser at the White House at impeachment hearings Thursday criticized one of Rep. Devin Nunes’ defenses of President Donald Trump, calling the congressman’s repeated assertion that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election a “fictional narrative.”

“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,” Fiona Hill testified. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

She called Russia’s interference in the 2016 election “beyond dispute” and asked committee members to “please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

“As I told this committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016,” Hill concluded on that point.