Former White House Russia analyst Fiona Hill blasted conspiracy theories about Jewish billionaire George Soros as anti-Semitic in her testimony Thursday at the House impeachment hearings.
She called attacks against Soros the new “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” infamous anti-Semitic writings disseminated by a member of Russia’s czarist secret police at the beginning of the 20th century and later embraced by Adolf Hitler.
The comparison came up when Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) asked Hill about accusations that she was a “mole” for Soros in the White House, a conspiracy theory promoted by now-convicted felon Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former political adviser of President Donald Trump.
Krishnamoorthi asked whether Hill considered Stone’s allegations to be anti-Semitism.
She responded: “Certainly when they involve George Soros.”
Hill called the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a collection of fabricated meeting notes that purport to show evidence of a Jewish plan for global domination, the “longest-running anti-Semitic trope that we have in history.”
“The trope against Mr. George Soros was also created for political purposes, and this is the new ‘Protocols of The Elders of Zion,’” Hill added. She called the attacks an “absolute outrage.”
Hill also notably dismissed Trump and his supporters’ claims that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She called the claim “a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
Soros has been a target of several baseless conspiracy theories floated by right-wingers and Republicans, including Trump.
Trump claimed that sexual abuse claims last year against his then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh were funded by Soros and that political protesters were paid by Soros.
Anti-Semitism has long been a staple of the Trump campaign and presidency. Soros, then-Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, all of whom are Jewish, were highlighted in a Trump campaign ad in 2016 attacking “those who control the levers of power in Washington.”