Thread by @themarketswork

1) From Fiona Hill Transcript (P. 180):

JORDAN: Doctor, tell me about your relationship with Christopher Steele.

DR. HILL: He was my counterpart when I was the director, the national intelligence officer.
docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG…

2) DR. HILL: So inevitably , when I had to do liaison meetings with the U. K. , he was the person I had to meet with.

3) JORDAN: And so you had a working relationship with him for how long?

DR. HILL: For the whole period that I was national intelligence officer, so that would be from 2005 to the end of 2009.

4) Screen-grab of sequence

5) MR. J0RDAN: The story on you says that you spoke with him in 2016. So can you tell me about that conversation?

DR. HILL: That was prior to the time that I had any knowledge about the dossier.

6) DR. HILL (cont): He [Steele] was constantly trying to drum up business, and he had contacted me because he wanted to see if I could give him a contact to some other individual, who actually I don't even recall now, who he could approach about some business issues.

7) MR. ZELDIN: Are you aware of her [Victoria Nuland] directing anyone at State to talk to Christopher Steele during her tenure as Assistant Secretary?

DR. HILL: I was aware from the exchanges that she asked Kathy Kavalec to talk to him...

8) DR. HILL (cont): after we had this discussion already, when I suppose Christopher SteeIe had asked to talk to her, and she asked Kathy Kavalec to talk to him instead.

9) MR. ZELDIN: In your opinion, would that be proper?

DR. HILL: I wouldn't have talked to him in that position, but whether it's proper or not, I think, is a judgment for Assistant Secretary Nuland and others.

10) MR. ZELDIN: This was in the midst of the 2016 election, correct?

DR. HILL: I believe that's the case. I mean, I read about this later, and Kathy Kavalec told me that she'd been instructed to go and talk to him.

11) DR. HILL: What the Russians do, again, is they get information that's not just plausible but often is factual. That's the way that they operate with a story. And then they will sprinkle into that disinformation.

12) MR. JORDAN (response): Fair enough. But the fact that the dossier was used to go after the individual who won the election, now President, seems to me to be example number one.

DR. HILL: Well, it was done before he was elected as President.

MR. J0RDAN (response): No, I understand.

DR. HILL: But I think it's also - there are two examples. Also, what the Russians did to target Secretary Clinton.

MR. JORDAN : Thank you.

14) MR. ZELDIN: Do you believe that it was appropriate for the Clinton campaign and the DNC to hire Christopher Steele to create the dossier against the Trump campaign?

DR. HILL: As I understand, they didn't hire him directly.

15) HILL (cont): I don't have any personal knowledge about how he was hired. I don't know that he was hired directly by the DNC. Was he?

ZELDIN: Well, they hired a law firm. Fusion GPS. It was through an intermediary, but the money originated from the Clinton campaign and DNC

16) Note: Zeldin's wording is a bit awkward in above section.

DNC law firm Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS.

17) ZELDIN: Funding aside, do you think it is appropriate for Christopher Steele to have been hired as a foreign spy to be collecting information from foreign governments to gain an advantage against the Trump campaign?

18) HILL (response) : Well, he's a former foreign spy. But, nonetheless, a foreign national. I don't believe it's appropriate for him to have been hired to do this. And, again, I think I already expressed my shock and surprise when I learned that he had been involved in this.

19) Earlier in testimony (p. 179):

J0RDAN: So information that Christopher Steele was played by the Russians, that information was used, as you well know, by our Justice Department, specifically our FBI, as part of the basis for securing a warrant to spy on an American citizen.

20) HILL (response): I think it's already come out that that wasn't exactly the case, that the dossier was basically out there when those investigations had already taken place.

JORDAN: Well, that's not accurate. It was part of what was taken...

21) HILL (response): Well, some of the information was that it had come through other ways. But, look, I don't want to also get into, again, a discussion that could go down a classified avenue...