The former Trump administration national security official and impeachment witness Fiona Hill is set to publish a book about American politics.
Hill’s book “There Is Nothing for You Here: Opportunity in an Age of Decline,” is set to be released in the fall of 2021.
“The book will draw on Dr. Hill’s deep expertise in the United States and Europe, as well as her personal experience on both continents, to explain how our current, polarized moment is the result of long historical trends — from imperial overreach to postindustrial decline — that have long afflicted Russia and the United Kingdom, and which now are beginning to affect the United States,” Hill’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media, told The Associated Press.
“Hill will describe the origins and growth of deep, geographically concentrated opportunity gaps, and show how they have fueled the rise of populism at home and abroad.”
Hill was a star witness in the impeachment of President Donald Trump, not only employing her deep expertise about Russia and Ukraine but also speaking first hand about what she had seen as senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council.
Hill left the Trump administration just a few days before the crucial July 25, 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump pressed the Ukrainian leader for dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden.
Internal alarm over Trump’s pressure campaign, initially via an anonymous whistleblower’s report, developed into the basis for Trump’s impeachment.
Hill detailed crucial instances of alarm and pushback over Trump’s actions.
For example, she recounted in testimony how Gordon Sondland, then the administration’s ambassador to the European Union, told a Ukrainian delegation during a key July gathering that “we have an agreement with the Chief of Staff for a meeting [between Trump and Zelensky] if these investigations in the energy sector start.”
The investigations Sondland mentioned, Hill testified, were “code” for Burisma, the energy company that employed 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, “wasn’t coordinating with us” — even though he was briefing top administration 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.”
This is a critical, critical portion of testimony. pic.twitter.com/aO7gJBG8Ia
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 21, 2019
Hill’s successor at the NSC, Tim Morrison, testified that Hill had warned him that “Ambassador Sondland and President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were trying to get President Zelensky to reopen Ukrainian investigations into Burisma.”
Beyond her knowledge of key details about various officials’ actions, Hill also took on congressional Republicans that tried to downplay the severity of the Ukraine scheme.
In November testimony, she said that based on testimony and statements she’d heard thus far in the congressional investigation of Trump’s actions, “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.”
Some Republicans — including the President and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) — had floated the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for hacking Democrats’ emails during the 2016 election.
“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” Hill said. “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”
