Mon 14 Oct 2019 14.13 EDT Last modified on Mon 14 Oct 2019 15.08 EDT
Fiona Hill, Trump’s former adviser on Russia, arrives on Monday on Capitol Hill. Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Media
The fourth week of the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump opened with testimony before Congress by the kind of witness who has created the most trouble for the president so far.
Fiona Hill, the British-born former senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council, is a career public official with deep professional knowledge and no political ties to Trump.
Hill testified on Monday morning before three congressional committees about Trump’s decision, over the strenuous objections of aides including herself, to recall the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, from her post.
The week could deteriorate rapidly for Trump, whose effort to rally defenders in his own party has been damaged by concerns about a growing disaster in northern Syria, following Trump’s abrupt pullback there, and a sense that major secrets attached to the Ukraine scandal are yet to come out.
Looming ominously for the White House is the scheduled testimony on Thursday of Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union. A previous attempt by Sondland to testify was blocked by the state department, as part of a blanket White House defiance of the impeachment inquiry.
Congress is also due this week to receive relevant documents from an array of the most powerful figures in the administration, including the vice-president, the defense secretary and the White House chief of staff.
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