Democrats had set their sights on impeaching Donald Trump long before he assumed the presidency. The media was openly speculating how Democrats might impeach him if he won months before the election. Once they had control of the House in 2019, it was only a matter of time before they ginned up a pretext for impeaching him. Bizarrely, they launched an impeachment inquiry over a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Those charges stemmed from the accusations of whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, who took his claims to Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) office in 2019. Democrats accused Trump of attempting a quid pro quo with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which Trump allegedly called upon Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine in exchange for Trump not cutting off military aid.
According to Democrats, it was a corrupt effort to influence the 2020 election. The charges were so weak that Democrats faced accusations of politicizing impeachment, but with control of both the House and Senate, it was the last chance to impeach him before the election. So they did.
However, newly uncovered emails show that Ciaramella had significant connections to the Biden family's involvement in Ukraine that Trump wanted to investigate.
"The ‘whistleblower’ who sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment was deeply involved in the political maneuverings behind Biden-family business schemes in Ukraine that Trump wanted probed, newly obtained emails from former Vice President Joe Biden’s office reveal,” reports Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations.
Four years before Ciaramella made his allegations against Trump, he served as a national security analyst linked to then-Vice President Biden's office. During this time, he was a close advisor to Biden when Biden issued his infamous threat to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine unless the country’s prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma Holdings where Biden’s son had a lucrative board position, was fired.
Hunter Biden's dubious employment arrangement with Burisma and other evidence linking Joe Biden to his family's business ventures received scant attention, and Ciaramella's accusation of Trump’s so-called quid pro quo quickly overshadowed it. Other evidence of Biden family corruption linked to Ukraine went under the radar as well but has since received new scrutiny as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
“It now seems there was material evidence that would have been used at the impeachment trial [to exonerate Trump],” explains Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University. “Trump was alleging there was a conflict of interest with the Bidens, and the evidence could have challenged Biden’s account and established his son’s interest in the Shokin firing.”
Ciaramella’s role – including high-level discussions with top Biden aides and Ukrainian prosecutors – is only now coming to light thanks to the recent release of White House emails and photos from the National Archives.
The emails show Ciaramella expressed shock – “Yikes” is what he wrote – at Biden’s move to withhold the $1 billion in aid from Kyiv, which represented a sudden shift in U.S. policy. They also show he was drawn into White House communications over how to control adverse publicity from Hunter taking a lucrative seat on Burisma’s board.
Yet there is no evidence Ciaramella raised alarms about the questionable Biden business activities he witnessed firsthand, which is in sharp contrast to 2019. In that instance, he was galvanized into action after being told by White House colleague Alexander Vindman of an “improper” phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump solicited Zelensky’s help in investigating Burisma and Hunter Biden’s role in the company.
Some former congressional investigators say Ciaramella effectively helped cover up a scandal far worse than what Trump was impeached over. What’s more, he failed to disclose that he had a potential conflict of interest stemming from his connection to the matter Trump asked Zelensky to probe when he lodged his complaint against Trump. RealClearInvestigations was the first to identify the then-33-year-old Ciaramella as the anonymous impeachment “whistleblower,” something major media continue to keep under tight wraps.
Democrats have tried to undermine the damning testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business associate Tony Bobulinski with false accusations linking him to Trump. Yet Ciaramella’s partisan connections truly run deep.
"Ciaramella worked under CIA Director John Brennan when President Obama made Biden his point man on Ukraine in 2014, the same year Burisma hired Hunter,” explains Sperry. "The next year, the CIA detailed Ciaramella, a longtime advocate for aid to Ukraine, to the White House, where he worked closely with Biden and his staff as a top adviser on key Ukrainian policies."
Former Obama-Biden administration officials have confirmed in recent closed-door congressional testimony that Ciaramella was a key part of Biden’s process for making policy in Ukraine. In 2016, for instance, a White House photo shows him taking notes at a White House meeting Biden held with then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to discuss Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms and other issues.
Ciaramella also worked directly with top Obama and Biden administration diplomats on Ukraine, including senior State Department official Victoria Nuland. “Eric was regularly the clearing authority to get me into the White House for interagency meetings on Ukraine,” Nuland revealed in a 2020 Senate deposition. Asked if she ever discussed Ukraine policy and Shokin with Ciaramella, Nuland testified: “Of course, I did. He was part of the interagency process. He was also on my negotiating team for the six, seven rounds of negotiations I did with the Russians on [the disputed Ukraine region] Donbas.”
Ciaramella was directly involved in talks concerning the massive U.S. aid package to Ukraine that Biden conditioned on the removal of Shokin, who at the time had seized the assets of the corrupt Burisma oligarch employing Hunter Biden. He also arranged and participated in White House talks with Ukrainian prosecutors visiting from Shokin’s office.
It is not yet clear if Ciaramella is on the House Oversight Committee’s witness list for the Biden impeachment investigation, but he should be.
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