PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
joint with the
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REF
and the
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Monday, October
14,2019
it becomes clear that they were certainly up to no good.
But that was what I was already hearing.
And I was also told by Amos and other colleagues that they
had some linkages, so I also want to, you know, get you to step back at this
period. This is, you know, March, April, into May, where we were having a
standoff over Venezuela . And
the Russians at this particular juncture were signaling very strongly that they
wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and
Ukraine.
In other words, if we were going to exert some semblance of
the Monroe Doctrine of, you know, Russia keeping out of our backyard, because
this is after the Russians had sent in these hundred operatives essentially to
, you know , basically secure the Venezuelan Government and , you know , to
preempt what they were obviously taking to be some kind of U.S. military
action, they were basically signaling: You know, you have your Monroe doctrine. You want us out
of your backyard . Well , you know , we have our own version of this.
You're in our
backyard in Ukraine . And we were getting that sent to us , you know
, kind of informally through channels .
It was in the Russian press , various commentators .
And I was asked to go out to Russia in this timeframe to
basically tell the Russians to knock this off. I was given a special assignment
by the National Security Council with the agreement with the State Department
to get the Russians to back off.
So , in the course of my discussions with my colleagues, I
also found out that there were Ukrainian energy interests that had been in the
mix in Venezuelan energy sectors as well as the names again of Mr. Parnas and
Mr. Fruman, and this gentleman Harry Sargeant came up. And my colleagues said
these guys were notorious in Florida and that they were very bad news.
………………….
MR. ZELDIN: That's why I'm asking the
question.
So specifically with regards to the
first round of
questions, you stated something about
Venezuela and Russia.
Do you recall talking about some type of
DR. HILL: Yes. I said that the Russians
signaled,
including publicly through the press and
through press
articles that's the way that they
operate that they
were interested in they laid it out in
articles, I mean a
lot of them in Russian but, you know,
obviously, your
staff and Congressional Research Service
can find them for
you positing that, as the U.S. was so concerned
about the
Monroe Doctrine and
its own backyard, perhaps the U.S. might
also be then
concerned about developments in Russia's backyard as in Ukraine, making it very
obvious that they were trying to set up some kind of let's just say: You stay
out of Ukraine or you move out of Ukraine , you change your position on
Ukraine, and, you know, we'll rethink where we are with Venezuela.
And I said that I went to Moscow. It wasn't a classified
trip because I was going to meet with Russians.
And in the course of those discussions, it was also
apparent , including with a Russian think tank and other members, that the
Russian Government was interested in having a discussion about Venezuela and
Ukraine.
MR. ZELDIN: And just for my own knowledge then, so that's
something that it's all been publicly reported, everything's unclassified
there?
DR. HILL: It's been reported and that the Russians, the Russians
themselves made it very clear in unclassified public settings that they were
interested at some point in -- and, in fact , it was even reported in the press
that I had gone to Russia , by someone that asked a question of our State Department
officials in doing a press briefing: Had I gone to Russia at the time to make a
trade between Venezuela and Ukraine? It was asked as a question to Christopher
Robinson during a press briefing at the State Department.
MR. ZELDIN : Did you state earlier that there was a nexus
between Rudy Giuliani associates and Venezuela?
DR. HILL: I was told that by the directors working on the
Western Hemisphere. I didn't have a chance to look into this in any way. I was
told that the same individuals who had been indicted energy investments had
been interested at different points in energy investments in Venezuela and that
this was quite well-known.
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