Former Trump administration national security leader and witness to Edse’s account, Fiona Hill, is about to publish an e-book on U.S. politics.
“There’s nothing for you here: opportunity in the era of decline” is expected to be launched in the fall of 2021.
“The e-book will build on Dr. Hill’s deep experience in the United States and Europe, as well as his non-public delight on any of the continents, to explain how our existing polarized moment is the result of long old trends, from the imperial reach to post-industrial decline, which have long affected Russia and the United Kingdom , and now they are beginning to arrive in the United States,” Hill editor Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Harcourt Books -Media told The Associated Press.
“Hill will describe the origins and expansion of deep gaps in geographically concentrated opportunities and show how they have fueled populism at home and abroad.”
Hill witnessed the dismissal of President Donald Trump, not only because of her deep experience in Russia and Ukraine, but also for speaking firsthand about what she had noticed as senior director of European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council.
Hill left Trump’s management days before the major July 25, 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which Trump suggested the Ukrainian leader defame Joe and Hunter Biden.
The internal alarm about Trump’s lobby campaign, first through the report of an unnamed whistleblower, is based on Trump’s political trial.
Hill detailed cases of alarm and backlash about Trump’s actions.
For example, he told in his testimony how Gordon Sondland, then the administration’s ambassador to the European Union, told a Ukrainian delegation at a key rally in July that “we have an agreement with the leader of an assembly [between Trump and Zelensky] if those power investigations begin.”
The investigations discussed through Sondland, Hill said, were “codes” for Burisma, the power company that hired Hunter Biden.
Hill also described how then-National Security Adviser John Bolton subsequently called Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani — a key player in Trump’s dirt-digging operation — a “hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.” Bolton also called Sondland and then-White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s actions a “drug deal,” Hill said.
Sondland and others in the administration bypassed the normal foreign policy channels to assist Giuliani, who was bent on surfacing political dirt for Trump to use against Biden. During congressional testimony, Hill described it as a “domestic political errand.”
Sondland, Hill said, “is not coordinating with us,” even though he is informing senior management officials.
“He was being involved in a domestic political errand,” Hill said. “And we were being involved in national security foreign policy, and those two things had just diverged.”
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 21, 2019
Hill’s NSC successor Tim Morrison said Hill had warned him that “Ambassador Sondland and President Trump’s non-public lawyer Rudy Giuliani had to convince President Zelensky to reopen Ukrainian investigations into Burisma.”
Beyond his wisdom on the key key points of the civil servants’ movements, Hill also clashed with Congressional Republicans who tried to minimize the seriousness of the Ukrainian project.
In his November testimony, he said that based on the testimony and statements he had heard so far during the Congressional investigation into Trump’s actions, “some of you on this committee seem to believe that Russia and its security facilities have not opposed our country.” – and perhaps, one way or another, for some reason, Ukraine did.
Some Republicans, adding to President and Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), had introduced the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was guilty of hacking the Democrats’ emails in the 2016 election.
“This is a fictional story that was perpetrated and propagated through Russian security,” Hill said. “During this investigation, I would ask you not to publicized political lies that obviously promote Russian interests.”