Biden Loyalist and Registered Democrat Eric Ciaramella Perjured Himself in Denying Coordination with Adam Schiff Before Launching ImpeachmentGate 1.0

This guy was a key cog in nearly every anti-Trump conspiracy in government.

A former inspector general who fast-tracked a "whistleblower" complaint that led to the first impeachment of President Trump in 2019 knew the whistleblower was a registered Democrat and Joe Biden loyalist yet still determined his complaint was "a matter of urgent concern that appeared credible," according to newly declassified documents.

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.

This is the guy who rewrote the rules of what makes a "whistleblower" so that he could accept this second-hand hearsay and investigate it -- and then claimed the fact he changed the definition in the days after Eric Ciaramella whined to him was just a coincidence.

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.

Second-Hand Hearsay

An Obama holdover, Atkinson formally notified Schiff of the complaint in September 2019, paving the way for its release to the public.

By allowing a second-hand hearsay complaint to be processed, Atkinson bent the longstanding rules of his office, according to the declassified briefings.

He also transmitted the information to Schiff over the objections of then-acting National Intelligence Director Joseph Maguire, who had a legal opinion from the DOJ which overruled Atkinson's determination that the complaint was credible and urgent enough to warrant disclosure to Congress.

"The complainant's allegations appear credible to me," Atkinson insisted in a Sept. 19, 2019, briefing before Schiff's committee.

Atkinson called then-FBI Director Christopher Wray's chief of staff and briefed him on the complaint before filing a criminal referral with the bureau to investigate the allegations.

Atkinson also testified about the whistleblower and his complaint during a classified session held on Oct. 4, 2019, during which he stated, "The complainant was not politically biased in any way."

...

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.

"There is no indication of any misconduct by the complainant related to this disclosure," Atkinson briefed the committee, adding that "the complainant has played by the rules."

...

Then-House Intelligence member John Ratcliffe, now CIA director, said Schiff's office coached the whistleblower on how to file a complaint under intelligence community whistleblower protections before steering him to Atkinson, who facilitated the processing of his complaint, despite numerous alarms sounded by career Justice Department lawyers who reviewed it.

The department's Office of Legal Counsel ruled that the complaint involved "foreign diplomacy," not intelligence, contained "hearsay" evidence based on "secondhand" information, and did not meet the definition of an "urgent concern" that needed to be reported to Congress. Still, Atkinson worked closely with Schiff to pressure the White House to make the complaint public.

Former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz said cloaking the Biden CIA detailee in the whistleblower statute provided him cover from public scrutiny. By making Ciaramella anonymous, he was able to hide his background and motives.

More: the phone call that was the subject matter of ImpeachmentGate 2.0 -- the post-2020 election impeachment -- was, get this, illegally recorded.

Newly released depositions in Georgia confirm Federalist reporting that Democrats' attempt to imprison President Donald Trump for his 2020 election challenge in the state was based on a misinterpreted and illegally recorded phone call.

For years, Democrats and the propaganda press claimed President Donald Trump had asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to steal the election, and further claimed their allegations were supported by a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between the two men. In fact, Trump asked Raffensperger to take seriously the legal challenge that his campaign had made, which cited numerous areas where votes were in question. The call became the foundation for an impeachment effort and for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' since-discredited and dismissed racketeering case against Trump and his allies.

The newly released testimony transcript confirms what The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway reported in 2024: The call wasn't just misconstrued, it was illegally recorded by Raffensperger's "second in command."

Jordan Fuchs -- Raffensperger's deputy chief of staff -- admitted under oath that she recorded the call while she was in Florida, a two-party consent state that requires all parties on a call to consent to a recording.

During the deposition, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who was also Fani Willis' lover, noted that Fuchs received "use immunity" to testify before the grand jury, meaning she could admit what she had done without being prosecuted for any crime.

"I recorded the phone call," Fuchs admitted to the grand jury, shortly before admitting she immediately leaked it to The Washington Post, which had won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for its role in perpetuating the lie that Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia.

The call was the centerpiece of Democrats' and the propaganda press's "Get Trump" lawfare. Fuchs provided another leak to The Washington Post about another phone call from Trump a few days later. The Post later admitted its source -- Fuchs -- had provided false information about that call.

"The Post misquoted Trump's comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. Trump did not tell the investigator to 'find the fraud' or say she would be 'a national hero' if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find 'dishonesty' there. He also told her that she had 'the most important job in the country right now,'" read The Washington Post's correction.

"Several other major media outlets -- including NBC, ABC, USA Today, PBS, and CNN -- 'confirmed' the fabricated quotes from the Post's anonymous source by, get this, citing their own anonymous sources," Mark Hemingway explained. House Democrats would go so far as to cite the fake contents in their impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Raffensperger's office and the media they leaked to made it seem as though Trump was asking Raffensperger to commit fraud or do something illegal. But as The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway pointed out, "Anyone familiar with the lawsuit knew Trump was saying his team had already 'found' nearly 150,000 irregular or fraudulent votes and simply needed the secretary of state's office to agree ... just that fewer than 10 percent of them were problematic." The provision of information from the secretary of state's office was sought in part because of the urgent timing issues in play. The court date the Trump team had secured for their legal challenge was Jan. 8, after Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College votes.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 05:30 PM

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