Briefly Noted: Why Fiona Hill May Be In Trouble

Yesterday there just wasn’t much that seemed worth writing about—competent lawyer analysts are all over the Rittenhouse persecution, so why me? Today, I’m taking a mental health morning. However …

I’ve been reflecting for several days about the position of Fiona Hill, aka Think Tank Employee-1. A number of analysts of the Russia Hoax have expressed the view that Fiona Hill is not under Durham’s scrutiny:

Solomon L. Wisenberg @WisenbergSol

I think you are probably right, and I have not really focused on her in this context.

Stephen McIntyre @ClimateAudit

@WisenbergSol FWIW I think that Fiona Hill, in this context, is little more than a shiny object, a sort of clickbait for partisans. Also, the big and undiscussed issues pertain to post-inauguration period when any competent agent ought to have known Danchenko lied about Millian as source

I’m not here to tell you that Durham is targeting Hill—because I have no way of knowing. Certainly, the fact that she is mentioned—as Think Tank Employee-1—in the Danchenko indictment doesn’t prove that she’s a target for Durham. On the other hand …

Durham’s two recent indictments have presented narratives that go beyond the specific facts required for charging the false statements. As such, the indictments—especially, but not only, the Sussmann indictment—point toward a conspiracy case being built. I’ve maintained for the past three years or so that a conspiracy case would be the most likely vehicle for Durham to package his investigation into prosecutable form, and that appears to be where we’re headed.

With that in mind, I would maintain that, while Durham’s narratival approach in the indictments could require innocent persons to be mentioned, I would nevertheless never suppose that the inclusion of any given person is without specific purpose. Wide ranging as Durham’s narratives may appear, in fact I believe they are still narrowly tailored to his purposes at this particular stage of his investigation. For that reason alone, I’m not ready to lightly dismiss the possibility that Hill may be a future target for Durham. By default, I want to keep an open mind about that, a skeptical attitude with regard to dropping her from any person-of-interest list.

This is especially so because of Hill’s close ties to several persons—all associated with the Brookings Institution, a left wing think tank heavily staffed with Hillary partisans—whose profile has risen as a result of the recent indictments. One of those persons, of course, is Strobe Talbott—a long time top Clintonista, then president of Brookings, and brother in law to Cody Shearer, himself a dossier fabulist and peddler of Trump tales at the DoS. We recently quoted Jonathan Turley with regard to the Brookings connection. Turley is focused in his article on Talbott—with good reason, since Talbott may have been inside the circle of knowledge re the Clinton Dossier—but Turley also alludes to Hill’s other associations:

Danchenko worked for several years at the Brookings Institution, a leading liberal think tank in Washington, as an analyst in Russian and Eurasian affairs — and, as a result, Brookings features prominently in this latest indictment. Around 2010, another Brookings employee [Fiona HIll] had introduced Danchenko to Steele, who subsequently retained him as a contract investigator. (Brookings has become something of a common denominator for many of the figures discussed in indictments and recent stories related to the Russian collusion scandal).

Steele testified in London in a 2019 defamation suit that he had disclosed some of his dossier’s details to Strobe Talbott, then the president of Brookings. Talbott had his own longstanding Clinton ties. Among those, he was an ambassador-at-large and a deputy secretary of state under President Clinton; when Hillary Clinton was secretary of State, Talbott was named chairman of the State Department’s foreign affairs advisory board.

Talbott also pushed Hill to take a job in the White House. As we know, Hill later became a prominent anti-Trump faux impeachment “witness”. Was there more to Talbott’s recommendation to Hill? Was Hill, in fact, hired in a collusive way with Talbott by anti-Trump GOPers? That’s hardly a far fetched idea, as things played out.

Eric Felten has a nice, to the point, article about Fiona Hill this morning. In it he highlights Hill’s many close associations with Durham targets. That’s a very bad look. Association does not equal guilt, but I want to tell you as a former investigator that associations this close to known conspirators warrants very searching investigation. Felten suggests—he doesn’t quite say this, but …—a way that Durham could obtain considerable leverage over Hill to induce her cooperation regarding all the Brookings and Steele related players in the Russia Hoax: the possibility that Hill lied in her faux impeachment testimony:

What We Learned In The Special Counsel’s Latest Spygate Indictment

The electronic records of Igor Danchenko speaking to the FBI far more extensively than previously known suggests much more will come out about the Steele dossier.

You wouldn’t guess it from the title and sub-title, but Fiona Hill is front and center in this article. In fact, she makes it into the first paragraph:

The indictment of Igor Danchenko, the “primary sub-source” of Christopher Steele’s infamous dossier, reveals that the FBI electronically recorded several previously undisclosed interviews with the Brookings Institution researcher. Separately, it raises suspicions, according to congressional sources, that his Brookings superior Fiona Hill may have committed perjury when testifying about Steele during President Trump’s first impeachment.

If congressional sources are telling this to Felten, rest assured that the thought has also occurred to Durham. And if he can demonstrate that she lied in her testimony, Durham can squeeze her for details about everyone named above—and many more. Her mention in the Danchenko indictment has many people in DC puckering up—count on that. Whether or not she ever gets charged, she’ll be a witness—has doubtless already been interviewed, possibly before a GJ—and that has to be concerning for DC denizens. At the least they could fear how Hill’s testimony could work in combination with the testimony of others. That’s called synergy.

Felten also wants to remind us of all Hill’s associations with Durham targets, because that came up in her faux impeachment testimony:

Asked whether she was “aware of any interaction between Mr. Steele and Ukrainians,” Hill did not say “to the best of my recollection” or “I don’t remember specifically,” or even a simple “no.” Instead she expanded her answer to deny not only any knowledge of Steele and Ukrainians but to deny any knowledge of anything Steele-related: “I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he developed that dossier. None. I just want to state that.”

Witnesses “expanding their answers” is the stuff of nightmares for defense lawyers but, like so many before her, Hill apparently never dreamed that she could be left standing after the game of musical chairs came to a halt. Of course, depending on what she tells Durham, she might be able to bump one of those people who got to a chair before her. “No knowledge whatsoever” is a very blanket statement:

Lawmakers are particularly interested in that statement. The Danchenko indictment states that Hill introduced Danchenko both to Steele and to an unnamed public relations executive, since identified as Charles Dolan Jr., a Hillary Clinton ally. Republican members of the House Permanent Select Committee are questioning whether Hill could have had “no knowledge whatsoever” of how the dossier was developed when she had a central role in connecting those key players. RealClearInvestigations was unable to reach Hill through her former attorney.

“It’s hard to believe Fiona Hill introduced Danchenko both to Steele and to Dolan, yet had no idea of the purpose of the introductions she herself was making or what resulted from those introductions,” a source familiar with the thinking of House Republicans tells RealClearInvestigations. “So, yes, Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are taking a look at that.”

So, don’t be too quick to lose interest in Fiona HIll.