Fiona Hill recounted Thursday how she thought that Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, would “probably come back to haunt” the administration.
Hill, responding to questioning from Democratic Counsel Daniel Goldman at a public impeachment hearing, described a conversation she had with former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
She explained how she “brought to Ambassador Bolton’s attention the attacks, the smear campaign against Ambassador Yovanovitch and expressed great regret about how this was unfolding, and in fact the shameful way in which Ambassador Yovanovitch was being smeared and attacked.”
“I asked if there was anything we could do about it,” Hill continued. “Ambassador Bolton had looked pained, basically indicated with body language that there was nothing much that we could do about it, and he then, in the course of that discussion, said that Rudy Giuliani was a hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up.” (RELATED: Rudy Giuliani Tweets, Deletes, Then Retweets Attack On Gordon Sondland During Impeachment Hearing)
She told Goldman that she understood that Bolton’s “hand grenade” comment referred to Giuliani’s “quite incendiary remarks about everyone involved in this.”
“He was clearly pushing forward issues and ideas that would, you know, probably come back to haunt us, and in fact I think that’s where we are today.”
Throughout the impeachment process, multiple witnesses have cast Giuliani as the architect of an alleged quid pro quo in Ukraine.
Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, testified that the former New York City mayor led a false smear campaign that led to her eventual ouster.
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, claimed that Giuliani teased a possible White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in order to secure public announcements of Ukrainian investigations into the 2016 election and Burisma.
Two of Giuliani’s foreign-born business associates pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, and he is also reportedly the subject of a federal investigation for campaign finance violations and failing to register as a foreign agent.
Hill is a foreign affairs specialist and works in the National Security Council.