Commentary

Does the name Fiona Hill come to memory?  It did to me.

I recall her stern appearance, her mannerisms and British accent, and I wondered why she was invited by the Democrats to testify at the hearing covering the Ukraine and the Trump-Zelensky phone call.  She left her job in the White House national security office 10 days before the phone call took place.

There had to be a reason.  Reportedly, Congressional staffers, led by Adam Schiff, were excited after meeting with her for more than nine hours while putting together the impeachment inquiry.  Insiders say they saw her testimony as a way to torpedo the Trump presidency.

Hill reluctantly joined the Trump administration in April 2017 as a Russian expert under H.T. McMaster, national security advisor.  She was not a Trump fan and colleagues advised her not to work there, but with her Russian knowledge, she thought she could bring something to the organization.

She previously worked in the Obama administration and worked at the left-leaning Brookings Institute, where staffers and advisors often go to await their next administration job offer.  It’s a branch of the Deep State.

She said she was “very shocked and very saddened,” about Trump’s disparaging of Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and referred to the phone call as her “worst fears and nightmares.”  It was obvious that Hill was at odds with Trump‘s desire to improve relations with Putin.

“Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election,” she said, revealing her knowledge of Russia.  She noted that Russia readily exploited partisan divisions to undermine the United States from within.

An expert on Russia, yes, but what did she know?  “Fiona’s friend and co-worker at Brookings Institution think tank was none other than Igor Danchenko,” according to Victoria Taft at PJ Media.  “She also knew Christopher Steele and introduced the two, and faster than you can say furious, Igor was working with Steele to make up stuff for that collection of notes and memos know as the Steele Dossier.”

That friendship doesn’t necessarily implicate Hill in their effort to develop the Russian collusion tale, but she should be concerned with the friends and relationships she has established.

Danchenko was named in John Durham’s 39-page indictment.  Durham has been investigating the charges of Russian collusion brought against President Trump for the past two years.  Durham previously filed an indictment against Michael A. Sussmann, who had ties to the DNC and Clinton campaign.  Both indictments allege lying to the FBI.

Reading Kimberly Strassel’s column in the Wall Street Journal Friday, “Durham and the Clinton Dossier,” she reminds readers about the time it has taken, so far, to reveal who was behind the document, fabricated to bring down the Trump presidency.

Strassel takes us back to 2016, when a few rogues in the FBI, Democrats and the leftist media claimed that President Trump harbored secret and nefarious ties with Russia, based on the dossier concocted by Christopher Steele, who was considered a “credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive and important information to the U.S. government.”

“He had come across troubling evidence of Trump collusion and brought it to U.S. law enforcement,” she notes.  How convenient.

It was a year later that we learned that the Steele Dossier, which Strassel says should have been call the “Clinton Dossier,” was commissioned by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS with the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

The indictment against Danchenko refers to PR Executive 1, who has been identified at Charles Dolan a longtime Clinton crony – Bill and Hillary.  For eight years he helped handle global public relations for the Russian government, and throughout 2016 interacted with senior Russian officials and Russian embassy staff.

It took another two years for the DOJ IG Michael Horowitz to expose that Steele had relied on a Russian source, who had provided content as “hearsay.”  Now, after another two years, Durham has indicted that Russian source – Danchenko.

Who knows where these indictments will lead?  Will there be others?

We know that there was no collusion with Russia on the part of the Trump campaign, but after four years of allegations hanging over the Trump presidency, voters deserve to see the perpetrators identified and punished.

Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.