What really happened behind the scenes of the first Trump impeachment? Newly declassified documents now reveal what was known to investigators but kept hidden from Congress.
The Background
As reported on Wednesday’s AM Update, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard released a tranche of declassified documents this week exposing what she called a “coordinated effort” inside the Intelligence Community to “manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President [Donald] Trump in 2019.”
A quick refresher: In August 2019, a whistleblower – later identified by Real Clear Investigations as Eric Ciaramella – filed a complaint centered on a July phone call between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alleging the U.S. president pressured Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden while withholding roughly $400 million in U.S. military aid.
Those allegations became the basis for Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress charges. He was ultimately acquitted by the U.S. Senate.
The New Revelations
In the months and years since, key details have emerged about the whistleblower and his account, including that he was not a firsthand witness to the call, spoke with Democratic staff on the House Intelligence Committee before filing the complaint, was a registered Democrat, and previously worked with Biden on Ukraine policy when he was vice president.
The new documents released by DNI Gabbard focus squarely on the actions of then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. The DNI alleges that, despite being aware of those issues, he “proceeded to take actions to weaponize the whistleblower process” – including keeping key information about the whistleblower’s credibility classified and out of the hands of Congress and the public.
The Analysis
AM Update spoke with Just the News founder and CEO John Solomon, who first reported on these newly declassified documents, about the revelations. He said the first Trump impeachment was a ruse from the start:
“It’s actually in the moment right after Donald Trump has been cleared of Russia collusion, that a new scandal starts. I wrote the stories in The Hill in March of 2019 saying that Joe Biden fired the Ukrainian prosecutor who is investigating… Hunter Biden’s company in Ukraine called Burisma. A big scandal starts. ABC and New York Times are following the story and, all of a sudden, a whistleblower comes out of the blue from the intelligence community and says Donald Trump was trying to pressure the new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate this Hunter Biden-Joe Biden stuff; and there’s no truth to the Hunter Biden-Joe Biden stuff; and it was an inappropriate use of the president’s power in a foreign conversation. And that touches off impeachment, which results in the president being impeached before he’s acquitted in the Senate.”
Solomon explained why the inspector general’s successful effort to hide what he knew about the lack of credibility from the whistleblower amounts to a serious violation of the judicial process:
“They decided to keep that information classified so that it couldn’t be given to Congress, couldn’t be given to the president’s defense lawyers, couldn’t be given to the senators who sat in judgment of the president, or the House members who had to decide whether to impeach a president. In any other judicial proceeding, this would be considered what they call a Brady violation, a failure of the government to turn over exculpatory evidence so that a defendant can make their best chance or best case for innocence. It is so severe an omission that Tulsi Gabbard yesterday, when she released these documents at the request of Just the News… said, ‘I believe… the former Inspector General of the Intelligence Committee, weaponized the whistleblower system and hijacked the responsibility of the intelligence community to be forthcoming.’ Those are very strong words from the DNI.”
Solomon said it is unclear exactly why Atkinson withheld key information about the whistleblower’s credibility, but he pointed to one possible explanation:
“We don’t know the reason why it was kept secret. We do know one thing from documents that we got from Tulsi Gabbard, the whistleblower was pressuring the inspector general of the Intelligence Community not to turn over the evidence of bias. He was worried that if people found out about his biases, his connection to Joe Biden and Ukraine policy, his dislike of Republicans, that he might be undercut. And so he was pressuring the inspector general. We don’t know whether that was a factor, but what we do know is the evidence remain classified and, therefore, couldn’t be introduced at the trial for the public, or the senators, or the impeachment managers to have that benefit, let alone… the president’s own lawyers.”
The big question now is whether any of this leads to real accountability. Solomon weighed in:
“We don’t know whether what Michael Atkinson did rose to the level of a crime or not. I am reporting today that the new inspector general of the Intelligence Community is reviewing all of the whistleblower urgent concern cases of the last few years to see if they were properly handled in light of what they learned here. That is going to get into two very important cases. This one that we just talked about… And another one where efforts to notify the president and the Congress about potential Chinese infiltration of voter registration databases in 2020 was suppressed. And the fact that those are getting a fresh look with a new sheriff in town is certainly, I think, something that the public might be interested in. Whether that results later in a criminal referral, whether someone in Congress does it, we don’t know yet.”
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