President Donald Trump is moving to name Fiona Hill, a former intelligence officer and well-known scholar of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as his top Russia adviser, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked at the National Intelligence Council from 2006 to 2009, is in line to become White House senior director for Europe and Russia, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the appointment hasn't been made official. The person said Hill "wrote the book" on Putin, a reference to "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin," a 2013 biography of the Russian leader.
The White House offered Hill the job before National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the days after Trump's victory, according to the person.