The Latest: Hill slams ‘fictional narrative’ about Ukraine

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the House impeachment hearings into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine (all times local):

8 a.m.

A former National Security Council aide will tell the House impeachment hearing that one of the central Republican talking points — that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election — is a “fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services.”

In prepared testimony Thursday, Fiona Hill stressed that she is a “nonpartisan foreign policy expert” who has served Republican and Democratic administrations. She says the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election “is beyond dispute.”

She adds, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternative narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

Hill says the impact of the 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. She says, “Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned.”

Hill was a top aide to then-national security adviser John Bolton. She’s appearing before the House panel looking into President Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democrats and rival Joe Biden.

Hill says, “I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth.”

Trump denies doing anything wrong.

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12:45 a.m.

House impeachment investigators will hear from two key witnesses Thursday who grew alarmed by how President Donald Trump and others in his orbit were conducting foreign policy in Ukraine.

David Holmes, a political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, says he was having lunch with Ambassador Gordon Sondland this summer when he heard Trump on the phone asking the envoy about the investigations he wanted from the Ukranian president. The colorful exchange was like nothing he had ever seen, Holmes said in an earlier closed-door deposition.

Fiona Hill says her National Security Council boss, John Bolton, cut short a meeting with visiting Ukrainians at the White House when Sondland started asking them about “investigations.”

The two witnesses set to appear Thursday are the last scheduled for public hearings.