“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services,” Hill says in her opening statement, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.

The statement amounts to an apparent rebuke of Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and others who have used hearings to advance claims that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that waged information warfare against the United States in 2016.

Hill’s remarks also appear to be aimed at Trump, who has been depicted by numerous witnesses as either convinced that Ukraine sought to defeat him in 2016, or advancing that conspiratorial claim as a way of deflecting attention from Russia’s involvement.

“The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions,” Hill says. “It is beyond dispute.”

Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Rep. Devin Nunes in 2018, Parnas’ lawyer Ed MacMahon told The Daily Beast.

Nunes aide Derek Harvey participated in the meetings, the lawyer said, which were arranged to help Nunes’ investigative work. MacMahon didn’t specify what those investigations entailed. (snip)

Nunes has been at the center of the broader story about foreign influence in President Donald Trump’s Washington. When congressional investigators began probing Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, Nunes made a late-night visit to the White House and announced the next day he’d found evidence of egregious wrongdoing by Intelligence Community officials. The move appeared to be an effort to corroborate a presidential tweet claiming that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Nunes then stepped back from the committee’s work scrutinizing Russian efforts. Instead, he ran a parallel probe looking at the origins of Mueller’s Russia probe. The undertaking made him a hero to the president and Sean Hannity, and a bête noire of Democrats and Intelligence Community officials. That work was still underway when he traveled to Europe in 2018.

Last month, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Parnas and Fruman with illegally moving money from foreign donors to American political campaigns. Both men maintain their innocence.