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Lord, we pray for transparency and truth. Shine a light on any dark plans of the enemy, Lord!
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For a town that leaks like a sieve, Washington has done an astonishingly effective job keeping from the American public the name of the anonymous “whistleblower” who triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump — even though his identity is an open secret inside the Beltway.

More than two months after the official filed his complaint, pretty much all that’s known publicly about him is that he is a CIA analyst who at one point was detailed to the White House and is now back working at the CIA.

But the name of a government official fitting that description — Eric Ciaramella — has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. Fearing their anonymous witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.

RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official’s status as a “whistleblower” is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate” — as the Intelligence Community Inspector General phrased it circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.

Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat hold-over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Further, Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah) left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

“He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” said a former NSC official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Also, Ciaramella huddled for “guidance” with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues, also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff’s office had recently recruited from the NSC. Schiff is the lead prosecutor in the impeachment inquiry.

And Ciaramella worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government. “He knows her. He had her in the White House,” said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Documents confirm the DNC opposition researcher attended at least one White House meeting with Ciaramella in November 2015.  She visited the White House with a number of Ukrainian officials lobbying the Obama administration for aid for Ukraine.

With Ciaramella’s name long under wraps, interest in the intelligence analyst is so high that a handful of former colleagues have compiled a roughly 40-page research dossier on him. A classified version of the document is circulating on Capitol Hill, and briefings have been conducted based on it. One briefed Republican has been planning to unmask the whistleblower in a speech on the House floor.

On the Internet, meanwhile, Ciaramella’s name for weeks has been bandied about on Twitter feeds and intelligence blogs as the suspected person who blew the whistle on the president. The mainstream media are also aware of his name.

“Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is,” said Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and national security adviser to Trump, who has fielded dozens of calls from the media.

Yet a rare hush has swept across the Potomac. The usually gossipy nation’s capital remains uncharacteristically — and curiously — mum, especially considering the magnitude of this story, only the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in U.S. history.

Trump supporters blame the conspiracy of silence on a “corrupt” and “biased” media trying to protect the whistleblower from justified scrutiny of his political motives. They also complain Democrats have falsely claimed that exposing his identity would violate whistleblower protections, even though the relevant statute provides limited, not blanket, anonymity – and doesn’t cover press disclosures. His Democrat attorneys, meanwhile, have warned that outing him would put him and his family “at risk of harm,” although government security personnel have been assigned to protect him.

“They’re hiding him,” Fleitz asserted. “They’re hiding him because of his political bias.”

A CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine, Ciaramella was detailed over to the National Security Council from the agency in the summer of 2015, working under Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. He also worked closely with the former vice president.

Federal records show that Biden’s office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other invited guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper.

Several U.S. officials told RealClearInvestigations that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House.

Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when the vice president was President Obama’s “point man” for Ukraine. A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the NSC by Brennan.

He was held over into the Trump administration, and headed the Ukraine desk at the NSC, eventually transitioning into the West Wing, until June 2017.

“He was moved over to the front office” to temporarily fill a vacancy, said a former White House official, where he “saw everything, read everything.”

The official added that it soon became clear among NSC staff that Ciaramella opposed the new Republican president’s foreign policies. “My recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing – Ukraine,” he said. “He didn’t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president’s policies.”

“So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the whistleblower,” the official said.

In May 2017, Ciaramella went “outside his chain of command,” according to a former NSC co-worker, to send an email alerting another agency that Trump happened to hold a meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey, who led the Trump-Russia investigation. The email also noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had phoned the president a week earlier.

Contents of the email appear to have ended up in the media, which reported Trump boasted to the Russian officials about firing Comey, whom he allegedly called “crazy, a real nut job.”

In effect, Ciaramella helped generate the “Putin fired Comey” narrative, according to the research dossier making the rounds in Congress, a copy of which was obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

Ciaramella allegedly argued that “President Putin suggested that President Trump fire Comey,” the report said. “In the days after Comey’s firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup [sic] of the special counsel to investigate ‘Russia collusion.’ “

In the end, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between Trump and Putin. Ciaramella’s email was cited in a footnote in his report, which mentions only Ciaramella’s name, the date and the recipients “Kelly et al.” Former colleagues said the main recipient was then-Homeland Security Director John Kelly.

Ciaramella left the Trump White House soon after Mueller was appointed. Attempts to reach Ciaramella were unsuccessful, although his father said in a phone interview from Hartford, where he is a bank executive, that he doubted his son was the whistleblower. “He didn’t have that kind of access to that kind of information,” Tony Ciaramella said. “He’s just a guy going to work every day.” The whistleblower’s lawyers did not answer emails and phone calls seeking comment. CIA spokesman Luis Rossello declined comment, saying, “Anything on the whistleblower, we are referring to ODNI.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to requests for comment.

In his complaint, the whistleblower charged that the president used “the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”  Specifically, he cited a controversial July 25 phone call from the White House residence in which Trump asked Ukraine’s new president to help investigate the origins of the Russia “collusion” investigation the Obama administration initiated against his campaign, citing reports that “a lot of it started with Ukraine,” where the former pro-Hillary Clinton regime in Kiev worked with Obama diplomats and Chalupa to try to “sabotage” Trump’s run for president.

Later in the conversation, Trump also requested information about Biden and his son, since “Biden went around bragging that he” had fired the chief Ukrainian prosecutor at the time a Ukrainian oligarch, who gave Biden’s son a lucrative seat on the board of his energy conglomerate, was under investigation for corruption.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff argued the whistleblower’s complaint, though admittedly based on second-hand information, amounts to an impeachable offense, and they subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry that has largely been conducted in secret.

The whistleblower filed his “urgent” report against Trump with the intelligence community inspector general on Aug. 12, but it was not publicly released until Sept. 26.

Prior to filing, he had met with Schiff’s Democratic staff for “guidance.” At first, the California lawmaker denied the contacts, but later admitted that his office did, in fact, meet with the whistleblower early on.

Earlier this year, Schiff recruited two of Ciaramella’s closest allies at the NSC — both whom were also Obama holdovers — to join his committee staff. He hired one, Sean Misko, in August — the same month the whistleblower complaint was filed.

During closed-door depositions taken in the impeachment inquiry, Misko has been observed handing notes to the lead counsel for the impeachment inquiry, Daniel Goldman, as he asks questions of Trump administration witnesses, officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings told RealClearInvestigations.

Republicans participating in the restricted inquiry hearings have been asking witnesses about Ciaramella and repeatedly injecting his name into the deposition record, angering Schiff and Democrats, who sources say are planning to scrub the references to Ciaramella from any transcripts of the hearings they may agree to release.

“Their reaction tells you something,” said one official familiar with the inquiry.

(Excerpt from Real Clear Investigations. Article by Paul Sperry.)

 

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George E. Saurman
November 7, 2019

he Constitution guarantees that someone who has been charged with a crime has the right to know who accuses him. This whisteblower is anonymous and second hand. the charges being brought by Adam Shiff are baseless and without evidence. Where is he justice? George

Timothy K Bunn
November 6, 2019

I have been reading the Book(s) of Psalms; there are four books to The Psalms I learned. I am reminded of King David and his relationship with God. David suffered so much from his enemies and was the apple of God’s eye. His Psalms are strikingly poetic in all of his suffering, physically,and spiritually.
I am mindful of the prophet David after reading what is happening to our President.
May God Bless and help him and his family.
Our Nation is sick and we need The Divine Healers help

Robert Toth
November 6, 2019

Amen to all these thoughtful petitions

Michael Guidera
November 5, 2019

7 Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
9 For those who are evil will be destroyed,
but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.
10 A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found.
11 But the meek will inherit the land
and enjoy peace and prosperity.
12 The wicked plot against the righteous
and gnash their teeth at them;
13 but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he knows their day is coming.

30 The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom,
and their tongues speak what is just.
31 The law of their God is in their hearts;
their feet do not slip.
32 The wicked lie in wait for the righteous,
intent on putting them to death;
33 but the Lord will not leave them in the power of the wicked
or let them be condemned when brought to trial.
Psalms 37

The enemy schemes and pulls dirty tricks to try and destroy that which is good. They try and take down a duly elected President, because they believe they know better. The Lord laughs at them and already knows the outcome, for his Word is true and His principles will dictate the outcome.

Lord give us strength and faith to believe your Word. Show us to fret not as this leads to evil, but let us rest in Your promises and find our place in Your army to fight this evil. Help us find our gifts and our position in this battle to overcome the enemy. Give us boldness to step out in Truth in love to counter the lies, which is the only tactic the enemy has to further his agenda. Show us how to pray to be the most effective.

I ask that You continue to expose all the lies that has gotten our country to this current level of chaos and misunderstanding. Give strength and wisdom to all those in the justice department that are working on finding the truth and bringing justice to those that have broken the law and who have strayed so far from any kind of fair behavior. May the Truth be shouted from the roof tops for all to see, may entire institutions be swallowed up in their own lies and destroyed to never again bring such injustice to our land again. May we see a transformation in the media that only prints and speaks the truth. No more lying, leaking to create false narratives which rip our country apart. I pray for a spirit of repentance to come and bring all these evil doers to open there eyes to understand the evil they have done and be given a chance to right there ways. May our country and the entire world see Justice served.

    Carol J Gary
    November 5, 2019

    Michael, your Scripture-based prayer resonates in my soul. I thank God for the wisdom and insight that He has given you, and that you’re willing to stand for His TRUTH, and also to pray for this Nation!

    I pray that God will raise up more men and women like you, who know God’s Word, live by God’s Word, and know how to accurately divide and apply the Word of TRUTH!

Melda Gilson
November 5, 2019

In contemplating this picture, I believe the “look” on the woman’s face as she stares at Melania says everything about what we have to fight against in the spirit. Just complete contempt. And for what?

    Carol J Gary
    November 5, 2019

    Good observation, Melda! For what? Evil has nothing but contempt when good is winning, and evil will do anything to bring it down.

    I really believe that the Dems know they have no way of winning an election against Trump. So, if you can’t “beat him”, you have to get rid of him…

      Mel Spence
      November 5, 2019

      May the accusers fall into the ditch they dug for themselves.
      Father you said, vengeance belongs to You so we ask You to hear
      The cries of Your people to protect our Precedent from these evil doers.
      Your the One that placed him in office and authority and now we ask You to cover him.
      In JESUS name AMEN and AMEN.

    Kris Kubal
    November 6, 2019

    That woman is the French President’s wife…

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