Paul Sperry for RealClearPolitics:
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.
If you remember, he faked his "whistleblower" status. Whistleblowers must have, according to the law, first-hand knowledge of some crime or dereliction they want to report. Eric Ciarmarella never had first-hand knowledge, he had heard it from someone without the guts to come forward. The Deep State bent over backwards to contrive a reason that he should be treated as a whistleblower anyway.
In 2019, then-National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella touched off a political firestorm when he anonymously accused Trump of linking military aid for Ukraine to a demand for an investigation into alleged Biden corruption in that country.
But four years earlier, while working as a national security analyst attached to then-Vice President Joe Biden's office, Ciaramella was a close adviser when Biden threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine unless it fired its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. At the time, the corruption-riddled energy giant was paying Biden's son Hunter millions of dollars.
Those payments -- along with other evidence tying Joe Biden to his family's business dealings -- received little attention in 2019 as Ciaramella accused Trump of a corrupt quid pro quo. Neither did subsequent evidence indicating that Hunter Biden's associates had identified Shokin as a "key target." These matters are now 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]," said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who has testified as an expert witness in the ongoing Biden impeachment inquiry. "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.
Recall that Biden decided to demand that Ukraine fire the prosecutor looking into Burisma, and threatened to hold back a billion dollars in US funding until they did.
Later, Obama and the Deep State would pretend that this was all authorized by the State Department.
But it wasn't. The State Department never expressed any desire to see Shokin fired.
Biden just made that up on his own -- as a favor to his son, who needed to deliver to his paymasters to prove the Biden Brand was worth investing in.
And Eric Ciarmarella was among those who were "shocked" to see Biden freelancing and extorting a foreign country as a favor to his son:
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.
There's much more in the article.
But this irony is wonderful:
What Ciaramella witnessed and what he documented in notes he took during high-level Biden-Ukraine meetings could now be relevant to the active impeachment inquiry of President Biden. The House may have little choice but to hold the kind of hearings the Democrats blocked during the earlier impeachment by keeping Ciaramella's identity -- and his own potential conflict -- secret.
As the catalyst for Trump's impeachment, Ciaramella could now be a reluctant witness for Biden's.