The media may have moved on from the Trump impeachment saga, but that doesn’t make the story any less explosive — especially now that new documents released in April are shedding more light on the operation behind the so-called whistleblower complaint.
Yes, much of the public attention is focused on Iran and the escalating global situation right now. But investigative reporter Paul Sperry has continued digging into Eric Ciaramella, and the new details only deepen questions about how political the entire impeachment process really was.
Some of the facts were already known for years: Ciaramella reportedly had contact with Rep. Adam Schiff’s office before the whistleblower complaint was filed, and he was widely reported to be a registered Democrat with ties to officials hostile to Donald Trump.
But the newly surfaced records add another layer to the controversy. According to the disclosures, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson was allegedly aware of concerns surrounding Ciaramella’s political bias and still moved forward while later portraying the complaint to Congress in 2019 as free from partisan manipulation.
To Trump allies, the revelations reinforce what they have argued for years: that the impeachment effort was never a neutral good-faith whistleblower process, but a politically driven operation dressed up as an intelligence community scandal.
Ciaramella was later hit with a criminal referral from Tulsi Gabbard, who is expected to leave her post on June 30.
But according to Sperry’s reporting, it sounds like Atkinson should be considered for a criminal referral:
The documents also reveal the anonymous whistleblower secretly met with the Democratic staff of former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff prior to submitting his complaint in August 2019.
Yet under direct questioning, the whistleblower – later identified by RealClearInvestigations as intelligence analyst Eric Ciaramella – failed to disclose those contacts in interviews with IG investigators or on whistleblower forms, according to more than 350 pages of intel briefings Schiff classified as secret and locked up in a Capitol vault.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford released the papers Monday morning after National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard declassified them late last week. Justice Department insiders say the documents factor into an ongoing grand jury investigation into an alleged “grand conspiracy” by former Obama and Biden officials to illegally target Trump in political espionage activities.
Nonetheless, IG Michael Atkinson, then the intelligence community’s top watchdog, did not question the whistleblower’s political motivations, truthfulness or credibility.
Atkinson conducted no investigation of his interactions with Schiff staffers to see if political bias played a role in the preparation of his complaint, which alleged that Trump “had clearly committed a criminal act” in a 30-minute phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During that call, which was reported listened to by dozens of people, Trump told Zelenskyy “I would like you to do us a favor,” and help investigate Biden’s son’s role in the Burisma scandal. It was later alleged that Trump held up Ukraine funding to force that assistance, which never came. The whistleblower was not in the White House at the time to witness the phone call and relied instead on the account of former White House colleague and political ally Alexander Vindman, who is now seeking a U.S. Senate seat in Florida as a Democrat.
The two committee briefings spanned more than 10 hours and were conducted behind closed doors in a secure underground facility in the Capitol. The contents of those classified sessions have long been the source of mystery.
Atkinson refused to disclose the identity of the whistleblower “even now in a classified setting,” because he said he felt compelled to “honor” his “request for confidentiality” – even though the IG has the authority to disclose such information in the course of an investigation.
At the same time, however, Atkinson revealed that the whistleblower disclosed under questioning by his team of three investigators that he was “a registered member of the Democratic Party [and] had a prior professional relationship with one of the Democratic presidential candidates for the 2020 election.”
Ciaramella is listed in voting records as a registered Democrat. He worked directly with Vice President Biden on national security issues involving Ukraine and Russia. Ciaramella was even involved in internal Obama White House discussions over Burisma and Hunter Biden, as RCI also first reported.
These facts did not raise flags with Atkinson.
Sperry also dropped a tweet regarding why there should be more focus on Ciaramella over Russiagate:
Why is Eric Anthony Ciaramella so worthy of prosecutors’ attention? He’s the high-fructose corn syrup of Bidengate+Russiagate –he’s in everything, inclg:
1) Burisma-Biden corruption scandal
2) Ukraine-Chalupa 2016 influence op vs. Trump
3) Soros-Hillary 2016 plan to smear Trump
4) Obama’s sham Putin-Trump ICA
5) Trump White House/NSC leaks to MSM in 2017
6) Schiff’s anti-Trump 2019 impeachment plot
So many people should be in prison over what they did and tried to do to President Trump.
