CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin continued the media's recent history of poor impeachment predictions on Thursday when he predicted that Dr. Fiona Hill would testify that Russia interfered in the 2016 election for the purposes of electing Donald Trump.
Talking to Wolf Blitzer, Toobin initially unwittingly undermined the entire narrative that Trump is being impeached for attempting to leverage U.S. aid to Ukraine in order to get that country to investigate his rivals, "And the issue that she's going to focus on, as I understand it, is why was the President involved in all of this? Why did the President have this obsession with Ukraine? He thought Ukraine was out to get him in the 2016 election. So he had this bitterness against Ukraine."
However, Toobin missed this and instead declared:
She will testify and what she has testified previously in closed session was that this was a fantasy. That Ukraine did not try to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. That it was always Russia that was involved trying to help Trump. You know, her narrative is very much like the narrative in the first part of the Mueller report. The part about Russia that said there was this concerted effort by Russia to help Donald Trump get elected and not that Ukraine had any particular role in the campaign, one way or the other.
As it would turn out, Hill did not testify that Russia sought to get Trump elected, she instead stated that their goal was to cast a shadow of doubt about the legitimacy of whichever candidate won in 2016 and to stir up resentment by pitting "one side of our electorate against the other, that they would pit party against the other." As for the part about Ukraine, even if we accept Toobin and Hill's word that Ukraine did not interfere in the 2016 election as true, "if" being the key word, because sites like Politico are not well known to peddle right-wing conspiracy theories, being wrong about something is no sensible person's definition of a high crime or misdemeanor.
Here is a transcript for the November 21 show:
CNN
CNN Impeachment Coverage
7:12 AM ET
WOLF BLITZER: All right. Let's continue the conversation. Our legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is with us right now. Let's talk a little bit about what we're going to be hearing, Jeffrey, this morning. Dr. Fiona Hill was the top Russia adviser on the NSC, national security council. She's got a strong statement prepared.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: She does. And the issue that she's going to focus on, as I understand it, is why was the president involved in all of this? Why did the president have this obsession with Ukraine? He thought Ukraine was out to get him in the 2016 election. So he had this bitterness against Ukraine. What she will testify and what she has testified previously in closed session was that this was a fantasy. That Ukraine did not try to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. That it was always Russia that was involved trying to help Trump. You know, her narrative is very much like the narrative in the first part of the Mueller report. The part about Russia that said there was this concerted effort by Russia to help Donald Trump get elected and not that Ukraine had any particular role in the campaign, one way or the other.
