Tag: Donald Trump parroting Russian talking points

Trump repeats debunked Ukraine claim a day after Hill’s tough testimony

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Friday repeated his debunked claim that Ukraine is connected to a hacked Democratic server from the 2016 election, the same assertion that he raised on his call with the Ukrainian president at the heart of an impeachment inquiry.
Trump made the claim a day after a former White House official with expertise on Russia, Fiona Hill, chastised Republicans for giving air in the impeachment hearings to conspiracy theories that Ukraine, and not Russia, was a driver of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Hill’s statements to the House Intelligence Committee essentially rebuked her former boss, as Trump has repeatedly floated the theory — and did so again on Friday.

“They gave the server to CrowdStrike or whatever it’s called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian, and I still want to see that server,” Trump told the hosts of “Fox & Friends.”

View the complete November 22 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Fiona Hill Testifies ‘Fictions’ on Ukraine Pushed by Trump Help Russia

New York Times logoThe former top White House aide denounced a theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, as she tied the president’s pressure campaign to Russian efforts to sow political divisions in America.

WASHINGTON — A former White House Russia expert on Thursday sharply denounced a “fictional narrative” embraced by President Trump and his Republican allies that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election, testifying that the claim was a fabrication by Moscow that had harmed the United States.

The expert, Fiona Hill, tied a pressure campaign on Ukraine by Mr. Trump and some of his top aides to an effort by Russia to sow political divisions in the United States and undercut American diplomacy. She warned Republicans that legitimizing an unsubstantiated theory that Kyiv undertook a concerted campaign to interfere in the election — a claim the president pushed repeatedly for Ukraine to investigate — played into Russia’s hands.

“In the course of this investigation,” Dr. Hill testified before the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings, “I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

View the complete November 21 article by Nicholas Fandos and Michael D. Shear on The New York Times website here.