Former
White House adviser Fiona Hill has testified that the vast majority of the
American diplomatic and intelligence community believed a central thrust behind Donald Trump’s demands that
Ukraine launch an investigation were based on a “fictional narrative” pushed by Russians intent on casting a dark cloud over the American electoral system, and that the unconventional American effort to pursue it was "going to blow up".The damning remarks undercut a central element of the
Republican argument against the impeachment narrative — that the president had good reason to ask for a foreign leader to effectively interfere and dig into American
elections – and came amid hours of testimony from Dr Hill, alongside evidence from David Holmes, a top staffer at the US embassy in Ukraine.