by Jerry Dunleavy
Within days of Robert Mueller's underwhelming Russiagate testimony before Congress, the Ukraine saga which would lead to Trump's impeachment was being launched.
The Democrat-led Ukraine impeachment effort of 2019 was
linked to and a continuation of the Russiagate saga and of the failed
effort by special counsel Robert Mueller to unearth criminality by
President Donald Trump, newly-declassified documents and testimony
indicate.
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. Gabbard also declassified long-secret
transcribed interviews from the watchdog, and these, combined with the
memos, provide further evidence that the Ukraine impeachment saga was a
continuation of the Russiagate saga which had flamed out.
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.
An alleged witness whose name was redacted and who told
investigators he had been assisting the alleged whistle-blower with
making his disclosures admitted to having a connection to Peter Strzok,
the FBI agent who was fired in 2019 for his misbehavior while helping
lead the discredited Russia collusion probe.
This witness — identified only as “Witness 2” — disclosed
that he had also worked on a controversial December 2016 Intelligence
Community Assessment (ICA) that claimed Vladimir Putin tried to help
Trump beat Hillary Clinton in that year’s presidential race, a
conclusion that the CIA now admits was based on faulty intelligence and a
failure of spy tradecraft.
Prior to being nominated by Trump to be the intelligence
community watchdog, Atkinson himself was an Obama holdover in the first
Trump administration and was a former top counselor to key Russiagate
figure and DOJ official Mary McCord. As a top Obama Justice Department
official, McCord reviewed
the deeply flawed FISA applications against former Trump campaign
associate Carter Page, and she later assisted House Democrats in
impeachment efforts against Trump.
The self-admitted potential biases
which the Ukraine impeachment whistle-blower relayed to investigators
for the intelligence community watchdog during the first Trump
Administration were redacted and concealed from House investigators in
2019, newly-declassified and released transcripts show.
These long-secret transcripts were from a mid-September 2019 unclassified session and an early October 2019 classified session
which were held to examine Atkinson’s role in the handling of an
alleged whistle-blower complaint. The missive was written by an
anonymous intelligence officer — identified
as Eric Ciaramella — in a saga which ultimately led to the first
successful impeachment efforts by House Democrats against Trump in
December 2019. Trump was acquitted by the Senate in early 2020.
Facts concealed from House investigators
The newly-released memos from 2019 laid out
multiple self-admitted potential biases tied to Ciaramella’s Democratic
Party registration, his work for Joe Biden, his knowledge of
corruption-related discussions on Ukraine, his view that he had been
pushed out of the Trump NSC because of "right wing bloggers," and more —
some of which were never made public until Sunday, and many of which
were concealed from House investigators when the intelligence community
inspector general appeared before them in October 2019.
The whistle-blower's' complaint centered on a July 25, 2019 phone call
between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The
Trump-Zelensky call was the day after Mueller’s lackluster congressional
testimony on the findings of his special counsel investigation.
Ciaramella did not respond to a request for comment sent to
him through the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he
is listed
as the Ukraine Initiative Director for the Russia and Eurasia Program.
Atkinson did not respond to a request comment sent to him at the law
firm he works for, and McCord did not respond to an email sent to her
Georgetown University email.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said
Monday that Atkinson helped “manufacture a conspiracy” and argued that a
“coordinated effort by elements within the Intelligence Community” was
aided by Atkinson when he lent credibility to and covered up the
political biases of the author of the whistle-blower complaint.
House Intel Dem staffer sought Russiagate angle during Atkinson’s first appearance
It was clear during the September 2019 appearance by Atkinson that some House Democrats were looking for a Russia angle to nail Trump.
“This committee — and you may or may not know this — but is
conducting a variety of investigations, some of which are public,
including whether the President or senior administration officials have
any financial conflicts of interest with foreign countries or
individuals; whether the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, or
others in the administration are improperly using the Office of the
President to influence policy in foreign country or even our own
political process; there is an investigation into the Trump Tower Moscow
project; and there is also public investigations into the foreign
influence in our elections,” a Democratic staff member whose name is
redacted told the intel watchdog.
The Democratic staffer asked: “Can you say whether the
subject of the complaint relates to any investigations that I just
listed for this committee?”
“I am not authorized to disclose that information,” Atkinson replied at the time.
“Witness 2” worked with Strzok and co-authored 2016 intel report
An intelligence official dubbed “Witness 2” — an ally of
Ciaramella’s during the Ukraine saga — spoke with Atkinson on August 21,
2019. At the time, “Witness 2” was a member of the NSC whose home
agency was the National Security Agency, and he was working for the
Directorate of Intelligence and for the European and Russian Affairs
Directorate.
“Witness 2 reviewed the transcript [of the call between
Trump and Zelenskyy] in order to have situational awareness of the
circumstances surrounding the call, and the discussions of the call, as
he was covering for the Director of Ukraine, hereafter referred to as
(‘Alex’), while Alex was out of the office,” the recently-declassified
memo said.
The memo said that “Witness 2 worked with Peter Strozk
[sic], and Witness 2 knew how it would play out if [Redacted] said
anything” as the intelligence community watchdog quoted him saying that
“if I unilaterally try to make an issue out of it the only person
impacted is me and not for the better.”
Strzok was a key player
throughout the FBI’s deeply flawed Crossfire Hurricane investigation —
including writing the opening communication that launched the inquiry.
His text messages — particularly with his co-worker and paramour Lisa
Page — in 2016 repeatedly displayed an anti-Trump bias.
“Witness 2 is assisting Complainant in regard to the urgent
concern because Witness 2 wants to be able to sleep at night, and
[Redacted] wants to help Complainant sleep at night, by registering how
concerning this whole thing was,” the memo said. “Witness 2” stated that
he “feels a moral and patriotic duty to help Complainant due [sic] what
is right” and said that he wanted to “sleep the sleep of the just.'’
Despite this, “Witness 2” said he would not have done what Ciaramella had done.
“Witness 2 made it clear that [Redacted] would not have
taken independent action on the information [Redacted] read in the
transcript for two reasons: first that [Redacted] routinely deals with
issues on a daily basis that are contrary to [Redacted] personal
beliefs; and second that [Redacted] did not have the level of granular
insight of details related to the Ukraine that Complainant had,” the
memo said. “Witness 2 could not connect the same dots that Complainant
did into the impact of what was said during the telephone call.”
In a section on “Potential for Biases or to Be Discredited”
it was also revealed that “Witness 2” had helped with the 2016 ICA on
alleged Russian election meddling.
ICA written at the direction of then-President Obama,
overseen by Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former DNI
James Clapper
“If someone were to try to discredit information provided
by Witness 2, they might focus on Witness 2 being the co-author of the
2017 ICA on Russian Interference in the 2016 election,” the memo said,
adding that “the ICA could have been, or could be looked at, as negative
towards President Trump.” The 2016 ICA was written at the direction
of then-President Obama and largely overseen by Comey, former CIA
Director John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper.
Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe
had pushed in December 2016 to include Christopher Steele's
widely-debunked dossier in the 2016 ICA on alleged Russian meddling. The
dossier was included in an annex to the assessment and was cited in the
most highly-classified version of the ICA.
The House report declassified last year and the CIA review
released last year sharply criticized Brennan for allegedly joining with
these anti-Trump forces in the FBI in pushing to include Steele’s baseless anti-Trump dossier in the ICA.
“Witness 2” was referenced
dozens of times in Atkinson’s October 2019 session before the House
Intelligence Committee. Then-Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., asked Atkinson,
“When you made your determination about the urgency of this matter, you
didn't have the actual readout of the call, correct?”
“I did not have the actual'.transcript, that's correct,” the watchdog replied.
Welch continued, “Right. So you had information that was
disclosed to you from the whistle-blower about what Witness 1 and
Witness 2 had told him, correct?”
“That's correct. And we also had what Witness 2 told us
about Witness 2's recollection of having read the call records,”
Atkinson said.
The watchdog later added that “Witness 2 had authorized
access to the White House and to the White House records as part of
Witness 2's official duties.”
Russiagate figure Mary McCord praised Atkinson’s handling of Ukraine whistleblower complaint
Years before the two worked at the top of the Obama DOJ
together, McCord was the Criminal Division chief at the U.S. Attorney’s
Office in the nation’s capital, and Atkinson worked under McCord as the deputy chief of the Fraud & Public Corruption Section.
During the Obama years, DOJ calendars show McCord and Atkinson at meetings with other Obama DOJ officials such as Lisa Monaco and Bruce Ohr.
McCord also served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney
General for the Department of Justice’s National Security Division under
Obama, then served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for National
Security from October 2016 into 2017.
Atkinson was McCord’s chief legal counsel
inside McCord’s office when she led the DOJ’s national security efforts
under Obama in late 2016, with Atkinson working as an Acting Deputy
Assistant Attorney General from March to June 2016, then working as
senior counsel to McCord from July 2016 until she departed in 2017.
“It could have all been squashed by the Justice Department, but he persisted,” McCord told The Washington Post
in October 2019, with the outlet saying that she had “worked closely
with Atkinson when she led the Justice Department’s national security
division and Atkinson was her senior counsel, and when both were in the
U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.”
“As soon as I saw that this was coming from him, that was
all I needed to know to credit the report, because I know him to be a
careful, thoughtful, meticulous prosecutor,” McCord told the outlet. “He
doesn’t seek the limelight. He doesn’t seek attention.”
The New York Times later reported
in April 2020 that “Atkinson had no role in wiretap oversight or in the
Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations, according to Mary McCord, the
acting head of the division from 2016 to 2017.”
Atkinson told
the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2018 during his
confirmation proceedings that “I have acquired intelligence and national
security experience as an Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General and
Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in the National
Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice.”
Atkinson was not asked about his 2016 role at DOJ during his 2018 confirmation hearing.
Ciaramella has appeared on dozens of podcast episodes put out by the anti-Trump Lawfare outlet, and he is listed as a “contributing editor” at the site. Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, has appeared on multiple Lawfare episodes with Ciaramella. Wittes was described by Politico in 2017 as “The Bard of the Deep State” and is a longtime Trump critic and a self-described friend of fired FBI Director James Comey and disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok.
McCord had a discussion
with Wittes on the Lawfare Daily podcast in September 2024, where she
critiqued Trump appointees over the Ukraine saga and again praised
Atkinson. “You know, recall John Ratcliffe came out, you know, very,
very harshly and harshly is probably way too mild of a term against the
whistleblower involved in breaking the story about the Zelensky call
that led to the first impeachment at this point,” McCord said. “That
seems like ancient history, right? But we can't forget about the
significance of that.”
McCord continued: “What Ratcliffe did there, to try to bury
and to try to disparage and discredit that reporting, is dangerous
because it was significant reporting about a serious national security
issue.”
Atkinson’s former boss at the Obama DOJ was key Russiagate figure
McCord took over the DOJ’s national security division in
October 2016, when the first FISA application targeting Carter Page was
filed, and McCord reviewed that FISA and subsequent renewals. The FISA
applications relied upon claims in British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s
discredited and Democratic-funded dossier. McCord was also deeply involved with the investigation into Trump’s first national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, and criticized the Trump DOJ’s 2020 efforts to dismiss the Flynn case.
McCord testified
before the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017 that she “did
not have the authority to sign FISA applications,” but she had reviewed
an early version of the first Carter Page FISA application.
“I do know that it relied on information from Mr. Steele,”
McCord said, adding that “I hadn’t seen a dossier. In fact, I didn’t
read the dossier until January of 2017, when BuzzFeed published
it.” She also falsely claimed Steele had been paid by Republicans
before being paid by Democrats. In actuality, Steele was hired by Fusion
GPS after it had been hired by the Clinton campaign through the Perkins
Coie law firm.
McCord was mentioned more than two dozen times in DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s FISA report,
which said she was “involved in certain aspects of the investigation
through the Office of Intelligence’s assistance with the first Carter
Page FISA application in September and October 2016, as well as through
meetings she attended in November and December 2016 about aspects of
the cases against Flynn and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
The Horowitz report said an Office of Intelligence attorney
“submitted an updated draft application to McCord for her review” on
Oct. 14, 2016, and McCord “said the collective thinking was that filing
the application was a legitimate investigative step even though it may
later be criticized unfairly.”
McCord was also provided with the Page FISA renewal
application on Jan. 3, 2017, which she remembered, and with another Page
renewal application on April 3, 2017, though she claimed that “she did
not have a specific recollection.”
She appeared on Yahoo News’s Skullduggery podcast
in December 2019, where she declined to give a firm answer on whether
the DOJ would’ve applied for the Page FISA if all the FBI mistakes had
been revealed to the department at the time. She said she agreed with
the reforms suggested by Horowitz and by FBI Director Chris Wray,
claiming, “I am, of course, very disappointed” that the FBI did not
provide the DOJ with potentially “exculpatory” information on Page.
McCord also seemed to defend the use of allegations by
Steele in FISA filings. "No question there was information included that
was provided by Christopher Steele,” she said. “But this idea of
‘dossier’ is something that came up much later and included all kinds of
stuff that is not in that FISA, right? All the salacious stuff [...]
had nothing to do with the information that was included in the FISA … I
don’t even think all of that was written at the time of the Carter Page
FISA.”
That claim was false, as the baseless claim about Trump and
the Ritz-Carlton Moscow appeared in Steele’s first anti-Trump report.
McCord was also in meetings
related to the baseless 2016 Alfa Bank collusion hoax, as well as in
ongoing Russian collusion meetings in 2017, including where Strzok made misleading claims about the origins of the Russiagate investigation.
McCord was picked by the FISA court to serve as an amicus curiae — or “friend of the court” — in April 2021, with Georgetown announcing it. Her husband, Sheldon Snook, had previously worked as a FISA court spokesman.
McCord had served as legal counsel on then-House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi’s security review after the January 2021 Capitol riot
shortly before being picked by the FISA Court.
A straight line from Mueller’s failed investigation to the Ukraine impeachment
The two Ukraine-related articles of impeachment did not mention Mueller, but the Trump-Russia allegations from his report underpinned the December 2019 impeachment effort.
Wittes wrote in The Atlantic
in April 2019 — shortly after the release of the Mueller report — that
“the president committed crimes. There is no way around it. Mueller does
not accuse the president of crimes. He doesn’t have to. But the facts
he recounts describe criminal behavior.” Wittes claimed that “the
president also committed impeachable offenses” as he signaled that House
Democrats should impeach Trump over the Mueller report.
The New York Times reported
in December 2019 that then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry
Nadler, D-N.Y., had “made the case that the House should take up three
articles of impeachment against President Trump” — including one related
to the Mueller investigation.
But the outlet said that “a vigorous debate unfolded, and
in the end Ms. Pelosi made the call: There would be only two articles of
impeachment, on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, narrowly
focused on the investigation into Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on
Ukraine. A third, on obstruction of justice tied to the president’s
attempts to thwart the inquiry of Robert S. Mueller III, the former
special counsel, was too much of a reach.”
The Democrat-authored articles of Impeachment — released in mid-December 2019 — did not specifically reference the Mueller report, but they did reference Russiagate claims.
The Ukraine-related “abuse of power” article of impeachment
written by Democrats against Trump said his actions there “were
consistent with President Trump’s previous invitations of foreign
interference in United States elections,” according to the Democrats, in
a clear reference to Trump-Russia allegations.
Mueller’s March 2019 report “did not establish” any criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and reports by
DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz and by special counsel John
Durham revealed deep flaws within the Trump-Russia inquiries and the
weaponization and politicization of U.S. law enforcement and
intelligence powers.
Mueller’s evidence was “not sufficient”
Mueller laid out ten instances of possible obstruction by Trump, but did not say one way or the other whether Trump had actually obstructed.
Then-Attorney General William Barr said he and then-Deputy
Attorney General Rosenstein reviewed Mueller’s report, consulted with
DOJ officials, applied federal charging guidelines, and concluded
Mueller’s evidence was “not sufficient” to establish Trump obstructed
justice. Barr said his decision was made independent of the Office of
Legal Counsel guideline that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, and
Mueller made clear he was not saying that but for that OLC opinion that he would’ve charged Trump.
NBC News reported
in early December 2019 that Wittes and Hennessey “had argued for the
inclusion of one episode from the Mueller report” and that “both tweeted
Tuesday that not including it was an error.”
“President Trump welcomed foreign interference in the 2016
election. He demanded it for the 2020 election. In both cases, he got
caught, and in both cases, he did everything in his power to prevent the
American people from learning the truth about his conduct,” Nadler said in his opening statement during the December 2019 impeachment proceedings.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who is now the House Minority Leader, called Trump a “serial solicitor” of foreign interference as he sought to link the Russia and Ukraine sagas in late 2019.
Republicans rejected this line of attack. Then-Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, who is now the CIA director, said
during the December 2019 impeachment proceedings that “Every time
Democrats get caught trying to frame this president with some crime he
didn’t commit, they follow up by accusing him of obstructing their
efforts to frame him for the things he never did in the first place.”
McCord played key role in Mueller court battles for House Dems amidst impeachment effort
At the same time as the Ukraine impeachment saga unfolded,
Atkinson’s former boss, Mary McCord, was actually directly assisting
House Democrats with their efforts to oust Trump.
The New York Times wrote
in an August 2019 article — titled “The House v. Trump: Stymied
Lawmakers Increasingly Battle in the Courts” — that “the fights include
efforts to reveal Mr. Trump’s hidden financial dealings” and to “force
his aides to testify about his attempts to obstruct the Russia
investigation.”
“The lawyers volunteering to help the House Democrats
include […] Georgetown Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional
Advocacy and Protection, run by two former national security officials,
including “Mary McCord,” the outlet said.
Politico reported
in a December 2019 article titled “Meet the legal minds behind Trump’s
impeachment” that “McCord and a team that includes former National
Security Council and DOJ attorneys first appeared earlier this fall on
the legal docket as attorneys representing the Judiciary Committee in
its fights for McGahn’s testimony and Mueller’s grand jury evidence.”
On behalf of the Democratic House Judiciary Committee, McCord helped file multiple legal briefs
in 2019 and 2020, including with the Supreme Court, as Democrats sought
access to grand jury materials from Mueller’s investigation as part of a
House Democratic impeachment efforts.
House Democrats fought
for secret grand jury information from Mueller’s investigation in
December 2019, saying they might use it in the January 2020 Senate trial
or for additional articles of impeachment against Trump. “The current
status of the impeachment proceedings underscores the continuing
controversy regarding the withheld grand-jury material,” Democratic
general counsel Douglas Letter told the court.
The Trump DOJ told the court at the time that the House
shouldn’t get the grand jury material because the approved articles of
impeachment “do not refer to the Mueller Report,” dismissing the
Democratic arguments as efforts to ”backfill” their legal reasoning
because the two articles relate to “a different controversy that
post-dates the Mueller Report.”
“The Ukraine controversy, and allegations of obstruction of
the House’s impeachment inquiry concerning that controversy, became the
sole focus of the committee’s impeachment inquiry, and that is the
basis on which the House of Representatives ultimately voted to impeach
the President,” then-Assistant Attorney General Joseph Hunt said.
The Democrats insisted that they wanted access to the
Mueller report information “to inform its ongoing investigations of
President Trump’s offenses.” Trump was impeached by the Democrat-led
House in December 2019, but was acquitted by the Senate in early 2020.
Jerry Dunleavy
Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/ukraine-impeachment-effort-was-continuation-failed-mueller-effort#dig-deeper
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