I knew Hill somewhat from the small circle of Russia hands in Washington, and many of my sources were her old friends. They were, for the most part, horrified by her decision to join the White House. When we spoke about their friend at the time, they all asked for anonymity to speak freely about their dismay. Many of these sources had served in presidential administrations, both Republican and Democratic, and their concern came from a place of understanding what Hill’s job entailed. One friend said they tried to talk Hill out of taking the job and had to briefly stop speaking to her after she did. Another friend was more sympathetic. Their impression was that Hill felt a duty as an American to serve, to provide her expertise, and, most importantly, to keep things from getting any worse.

It was the “adult in the room” theory that was so popular in the early days of the Trump administration: If Trump can be padded with policy professionals like Generals H. R. McMaster or Jim Mattis or John Kelly, his excesses would be tempered, his impulses on national security could be guided. They would be the hand on the wheel, steadying the erratic and impulsive driver who just happened to be the president of the United States.

Fiona Hill was to be such a person.

And she was not alone. Many people from Washington’s foreign policy circles, including self-declared Never Trumpers like Brian Hook and Elliott Abrams, took or considered jobs in the Trump administration. They, too, would be the adults in the room, the steady hand on the wheel.

During Hill’s first year in the job, her friends watched her carefully, worried about what her association with the Trump team would do to her reputation—and her mental health. They wondered whether the enormous stress and the psychic toll was worth it. One source told me that Hill was being shut out of important meetings: She had been kept out of Trump’s first meeting with Putin, in Hamburg, and was not in the Oval Office meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. The source had also heard that Hill had pissed off Ivanka, who summarily banned her from the Oval Office. (Hill contested this in an e-mail, writing, “A lot of urban legends and misconceptions are out there it seems!”)

“I really feel for her,” said a fourth source in the fall of 2017. “She’s a person of knowledge and integrity. When you take a job like this, you always have to ask yourself: ‘Is the good that I’m doing worth the crap I’m dealing with?’ And ‘Am I crossing a line?’ ”

At the time, the source felt that Hill was doing good by preventing harm. She had, among other things, overseen the implementation of more sanctions against Russia and helped get vital military aid to Ukraine. “A lot of her friends are giving her a hard time,” the source told me at the time, “but that’s pretty good stuff under the circumstances.” (In her e-mail, Hill said, “I rarely saw anyone from our community in the period I was at the NSC. I had no time to do so unless it was official.”)

Fast-forward two years, and most of the adults have resigned or been fired by tweet or, like Fiona Hill, have found themselves embroiled in an impeachment inquiry. There’s poor Marie Yovanovitch, a widely respected career foreign service officer and former ambassador to Kiev, who was harassed by Rudy Giuliani and his Soviet-born associates and then called back to the U.S. in the middle of the night. There’s William Taylor, a distinguished public servant who came out of retirement to become the acting ambassador to Ukraine in Yovanovitch’s stead, whose worried texts with Sondland have been released to the public and who is now another key witness in the proceedings. There’s Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a decorated Iraq War veteran, whose loyalty to the country was questioned because he testified that he heard Trump’s extortionist phone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. There’s Kurt Volker, who, without drawing a salary, took on the job of trying to keep U.S.-Ukrainian relations strong and off Trump’s radar, and who now seems to be implicated in pushing the Ukrainians to open investigations of the Bidens. Even Sondland, who publicly excoriated Trump in the summer of 2016 for attacking a Gold Star family, ended up donating to and working for the man.

There is a whole roster of names of otherwise faceless officials—some of whom will testify, some who refuse to—who went in, wanting to serve their country or advance their careers or be close to the seat of power, but who most likely did not expect to be witnesses in the impeachment of an American president.

Many, however, saw that no good could come of working for Trump in any capacity and stayed away. One Republican friend of mine who works in the foreign policy sphere was offered a job in the administration, but immediately turned it down. When I asked the friend why, they offered this explanation. “When you get in the car with a drunk driver, you’re not the one driving drunk,” the friend said, “but you’re still in the car when he mows down a pregnant woman in a crosswalk.”

Hill got into the car, as did Sondland, Volker, Taylor, Bolton, and a whole host of sober adults who wanted to have their hand on the wheel. The problem for them is that they were in the car at the moment of impact.

Julia Ioffe is a GQ correspondent.