What is the 'fictional narrative' a White House ex-adviser warns against?

[November 22, 2019]  By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's former Russia adviser, Fiona Hill, warned lawmakers in the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry on Thursday against promoting what she called a "fictional narrative " that minimizes Russia's attempts to interfere in U.S. elections.

'FICTIONAL NARRATIVE'?

Hill is referring to theories advanced by Trump and his supporters that Ukraine improperly influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election to hurt his candidacy and boost his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

The conspiracy theories, which have been widely debunked by U.S. officials and others, are at odds with the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies  and Special Counsel Robert Mueller  that Russia engaged in a massive hacking and propaganda campaign h to boost Trump and hurt Clinton.

"The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016," Hill told lawmakers on Thursday.

THE 'BLACK LEDGER' THEORY

Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and other Trump allies assert that Ukrainian officials circulated false information among Democrats and U.S. media in 2016 to discredit Trump and his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

That information, they say, helped spark an FBI investigation of Trump's campaign that dogged his presidency.

They allege that Ukrainians forged a record of millions of dollars in payments - known as the “black ledger” - to Manafort from the country’s Russia-friendly president then, Viktor Yanukovich.

Manafort resigned from Trump's campaign soon after the payments were made public.

He also admitted to taking at least $11 million from Yanukovich's government last year when he pleaded guilty to money laundering, illegal lobbying and other charges. He is currently serving a 7-1/2 year prison sentence.

President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of Apple's Mac Pro manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas, U.S., November 20, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

David Holmes, a staffer at the U.S. embassy in Kiev, told the House Intelligence Committee he thought the payments listed in the "black ledger" were credible.

THE DNC SERVER

Multiple U.S. investigations have concluded that Russia's government was to blame for hacking  Democratic Party organizations and leaking stolen emails at politically opportune moments in 2016. Russia has denied involvement, although U.S. investigators named the Russian officers they said were sitting at the keyboard during the breaches.

Some right-wing websites have said that the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which the Democratic National Committee hired to investigate the hack, falsely accused Russia, and spirited the hacked email servers to Ukraine as part of a cover-up.

Trump referenced that theory during a July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, mentioning CrowdStrike by name.

"It's not only a conspiracy theory. It is completely debunked," Trump's former homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, said on ABC in September.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Additional reporting by Brad Heath, Jonathan Landay, Mark Hosenball and David Morgan; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Howard Goller)

[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.