Now that damning details about the 2019 Trump impeachment have underlined that the sanctified whistleblower for the President Trump phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in reality a partisan hack, most mainstream news outlets have been reluctant to report on it due to strong evidence that the impeachment was based on a fraud.
It's a highly embarrassing story for CNN, so they tried to massage it, skipping the most important details in their Thursday story cherry-picked by Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez, and Sean Lyngaas in "DNI Tulsi Gabbard sends criminal referral over Trump’s 2019 impeachment to Justice Department."
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent at least one criminal referral to the Justice Department seeking investigations of a whistleblower complaint and its handling by the intelligence community watchdog that led to the 2019 impeachment of President Donald Trump, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office confirmed Wednesday.
To bolster the referral, Gabbard this week released documents that she said exposed a “conspiracy used by Congress to impeach President Trump.”
Gabbard’s office said the released documents show the then intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson did not follow policy in the handling of the whistleblower complaint.
The documents include transcripts of Atkinson’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in 2019 and notes from interviews with the whistleblower.
So what were in those documents? CNN doesn't say in any detail but Jerry Dunleavy of Just The News goes where CNN dares not tread in "Ukraine whistleblower said he didn’t want his bias noted, and IC watchdog seemingly obliged." A word of warning however. The story starts out with the (GASP!) name of the whistleblower who you can see above shaking the hand of President Barack Obama. A name that back in 2019 had been taboo to say aloud at the risk of being banned from social media or worse. Therefore readers might want to consult their priest, pastor, or rabbi for spiritual guidance before daring to wander further into the realm of what many liberals still consider a violation of the holiest of holies by gazing upon his mortal name.
Eric Ciaramella, the whistle-blower whose complaint sparked the Ukraine impeachment saga in 2019, sought to downplay allegations of political motivation following media reports about his potential biases, with the intelligence community watchdog soon asserting to the House that, despite the evidence, he did not believe the whistle-blower was biased.
Memos declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and released by Just the News on Sunday were written by investigators for intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson, who first handled the CIA analyst's complaint.
The newly-released memos flagged the Ukraine whistle-blower for having a "potential for bias," elicited an apology from him for misleading the probe about his prior contact with staffers on the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee, showed he criticized GOP congressmen, recounted that he asked to hide his complaint from Republicans on the intelligence committee, pointed to his close links to Joe Biden’s efforts in Ukraine, and more. Atkinson kept much of this from the House investigators.
Of course, CNN typically refused to name Ciaramella, but leaped to the defense of Atkinson with this gem:
Atkinson spent 15 years at the Justice Department before serving as inspector general of the intelligence community from 2018 to 2020. Atkinson’s reputation as a straight shooter prompted some lawmakers who were otherwise skeptical of the whistleblower complaint to take the document seriously, CNN previously reported.
Got that? IG Atkinson had a reputation for being a "straight shooter." Yet somehow this "straight shooter" did not raise a huge red flag over the credibility of Ciaramella whose testimony was crucial for the impeachment despite these revelations which you can read in Just The News but definitely not in the cherry picked CNN story:
The newly-declassified memos released by Just the News on Sunday show the intelligence community watchdog’s investigators were also acutely aware the whistle-blower's allegations were based solely on second-hand or third-hand accounts about what Trump was alleged to have done and that Ciaramella had worked on his whistle-blower efforts with a witness whose name was redacted but who told investigators that he was connected to disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok and that he had co-authored the flawed intelligence community assessment on alleged Russian meddling in 2016.
...The “Disclosure of Urgent Concern Form” submitted by Ciaramella on August 13, 2019 included answering a section titled, “I have previously disclosed (or am disclosing) the violations alleged here to (complete all that apply).” ...He checked a box next to “other office of department/agency involved” and said he had already spoken with the CIA Office of General Counsel, the CIA's Election Security Mission Manager, the National Intelligence Officer for Russia, and the Chair and Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council.
But he did not check “Congress or congressional committee(s)” despite having spoken with the staff of then-Congressman and now-Senator Adam Schiff before submitting his disclosure. Schiff, a California Democrat and House Intelligence Committee chairman at the time, told MSNBC in September 2019 that “we have not spoken directly with the whistle-blower” — even though members of his staff already had.
Such a treasure that whistleblower is. After admitting he only had second or third hand information about the phone call he then proceeded to deceive about his contact with Intelligence Committee staffers. So what is CNN's takeaway from this scandal? It, of course, comes via a Democrat:
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, denounced Gabbard’s efforts.
“This apparent criminal referral will amount to nothing because no misconduct occurred, but what it will do is chill future whistleblowers from coming forward to Congress with confidence that the law will protect them,” he said in a statement. “I suspect that is precisely the point.”
Or maybe it will chill future highly partisan whistleblowers who only have second or third hand information and also lie about exclusively meeting with Intelligence Committee staffers of only one party in order to hid the absurd extent of their partisanship while a "straight shooter" IG conveniently declines to raise a red flag on this activity.
