Former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill says Moscow will be delighted with American political infighting sparked by its interference in the 2016 election.
Hill, who joined the National Security Council in 2017, made global headlines with her appearance at the congressional impeachment hearings into whether President Trump abused his power to enlist a foreign leader to help him in the 2020 presidential election.
With her distinctive northern English accent, she became an immediate star in November as she chastised Republicans for helping Moscow by buying a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine was to blame for meddling in the 2016 election.
In a new interview with the Financial Times, she said her time in the White House led her to conclude that America had scored a string of own-goals in its relations with Russia, which was “exploiting all this infighting.”
“The GRU guys probably give themselves a big pat on the back … and are asking for bonuses,” she says of Russia’s military intelligence service. “The question is, to what end?”
Russian efforts to influence the election cast a long shadow over American politics. Congress has spent almost four years grappling with questions about who knew what among Trump’s campaign staff.
Even now, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who recruited Hill to his White House team when he was national security adviser, is fighting to retract a guilty plea related to a conviction that arose from the federal Russia investigation and his contacts with Moscow officials. Academics say the dispute raises profound questions about America’s separation of powers, essentially pitting Trump’s attorney general against a federal judge.
American intelligence and national security agencies concluded that Moscow was behind efforts to sway the 2016 election in favor of Trump.
However, the president and his allies have expressed doubt that Russia was to blame and at times demanded that Ukraine investigate its role.
Last year, intelligence officials briefed senators that Moscow was behind a campaign to frame Ukraine for its own actions.
In her interview, Hill avoided questions about Trump other than to echo what other officials have said. “There’s not much of a difference between the private and the public,” she said of his persona.
When asked what he was like to work for, she responded: “About like you would expect.”
She is more candid about the experience of working in a White House characterized by bruising battles between advisers. “I kept thinking ‘Bolshevik Revolution,’” is how she described the infighting. “I had always wondered what it was like … and then I found myself in the middle.”
As a result, it was not until the congressional hearings that she began to learn what other officials had been doing without her knowledge. “I knew more about what was going on in the Kremlin than what was going on in the White House,” she said.
And she used her knowledge of Russian history to deliver a pithy description of Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who once compared himself with Vladimir Lenin, such was his zeal for using the means necessary to rip up the established order.
“I kept thinking … he’s a bit more like Trotsky, because he’s like the permanent revolution guy who doesn’t quite fit in,” she said.
