Who is Fiona Hill and what can we expect from her impeachment testimony?
A day after bombshell testimony from the EU ambassador Gordon Sondland dealt a serious blow to Donald Trump’s fight against impeachment, the embattled president faces another day of potentially damaging testimony from the former national security council official Fiona Hill.
Related: Sondland's bombshell testimony blows holes in Trump's Ukraine defence
Sondland’s remarkable testimony in the House impeachment hearings appeared to directly implicate Trump and a coterie of top officials – from the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani – in ordering a scheme to withhold vital aid to Ukraine unless the country investigated Trump’s political opponent Joe Biden.
Hill – who was the White House’s top expert on Russia – is expected to testify about her concerns about a “shadow” foreign policy run by Giuliani, Sondland and others in which pressure was brought to bear on Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son Hunter and his business connections in the country.
Hill’s testimony will likely cover her own experiences and opinions about the activities of the Giuliani led effort, but also equally importantly those of her boss, then national security advisor John Bolton.
Bolton has not agreed to testify yet but Hill and others have already described how Bolton clashed with those promoting the alleged “quid pro quo” scheme and how he referred to it as a “drug deal” he wanted nothing to do with.
As the senior director for Europe and Russia on the NSC, Hill was the supervisor of Lt Col Alexander Vindman, and was succeeded by Tim Morrison, both of whom testified publicly on Tuesday.
Hill was brought into the White House by Trump’s second national security adviser, HR McMaster, because of her expertise on Putin and Russia. She had co-written a book on Russian president Vladimir Putin, titled Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.
Like several other key witnesses, Hill is foreign-born as a coalminer’s daughter from County Durham. She became a dual national after marrying an American she met at Harvard and speaks with a north-eastern English accent.
Since it became clear Hill would be an important witness, she has been subjected to furious attacks by Republicans and their allies in the rightwing media. Some have pointed to the fact that she knows Christopher Steele, the author of the famous 2016 dossier alleging Trump’s collusion with the Kremlin.
During a closed-door deposition, which was made public earlier this month, Hill said that she received death threats. “My entire first year of my tenure at the National Security Council was filled with hateful calls, conspiracy theories, which has started again, frankly, as it’s been announced that I’ve been giving this deposition, accusing me of being a [George] Soros mole in the White House, of colluding with all kinds of enemies of the president, and of various improprieties,” she testified.
“Now, I’m not easily intimidated, but that made me mad”, she added.
Hill defended the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, the target of similar attacks, who discharged from her post in Kyiv after Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his business associates led calls for Yovanovitch’s dismissal.
“There was no basis for her removal,” Hill testified. “The accusations against her had no merit whatsoever. This was a mishmash of conspiracy theories that…I believe firmly to be baseless, an idea of an association between her and George Soros.”
Hill also recounted a 10 July meeting between US and Ukrainian officials during which Sondland “blurted out” that there was an agreement that Ukraine’s president would get a meeting with Trump if Ukraine agreed to launch certain investigations.
She resigned shortly after, roughly a week before the infamous 25 July phone call during which Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate his political rivals.
On Thursday, Hill will testify alongside Ukraine-based diplomat David Holmes.
