Fiona Hill, onetime adviser on Russia to former President Donald Trump, considered faking a heart attack to put a stop to Trump’s infamous 2018 press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a new book.
The excerpt appears in Politico White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire’s new book, The Big Lie, which came out on Tuesday.
“Fiona Hill, the senior Russia expert on the National Security Council, who was sitting one row in front of me, later told me that she considered doing something, anything — including faking a heart attack — to disrupt the proceedings and get Trump to stop talking,” he wrote, according to Axios.
During that press conference after a meeting, Trump sided with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies on the question of whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election. In fact, it was Lemire, then an Associated Press reporter, who asked Trump who he believed during the press conference filled with outrage-provoking comments.
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“I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump said.
Hill, who served as an adviser to the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019, made headlines in May when she recalled a “bizarre” dinner with Putin in which he smelled odd and refrained from eating or drinking during the meal.