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Report: Anti-Trump Complainant Eric Ciaramella Worked With Brennan, Biden, and DNC Operative Chalupa

The anti-Trump “whistleblower,” whose complaint against President Trump spurred the Democrats’ impeachment inquisition, is a 33-year-old registered Democrat who worked under Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry reported Wednesday afternoon.

Eric Ciaramella, the anti-Trump operative, also worked with Alexandra Chalupa, a Democratic National Committee opposition researcher who led the effort to link the Trump campaign to Russia during the 2016 election.

Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American, “met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia,” according to Politico.  The DNC paid Chalupa $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016.

The DNC operative also reportedly partnered with a notorious convicted domestic terrorist-turned-activist known as the “Speedway Bomber” to dig up dirt on Trump.

Chalupa in 2016 said she “felt there was a Russia connection” and shared her findings with both the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Politico reported.

A former co-worker told Sperry that Ciaramella had a working relationship with Chalupa in the White House.

“He knows her. He had her in the White House,” the co-worker told Sperry.

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 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 senior White House official, where he “saw everything, read everything.”

Ciaramella left his White house National Security Council post in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media, and has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

“He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” a former NSC official told Sperry.

According to a former NSC co-worker, Ciaramella was behind the false narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed Trump to fire former FBI director James Comey.

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.”

Officials told RealClearPolitics that Ciaramella had strongly opposed Trump’s foreign policy while at the NSC.

“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,” a former senior White House official said.

With Ciaramella’s name long under wraps, interest in the intelligence analyst has become 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.

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and national security adviser to Trump told Sperry, “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.”

Indeed, most, if not all members of the media on the left and the right knew who the complainant was and oddly enough, his identity was not disclosed. On the right, no one wanted to be blamed for blowing the cover of an active CIA employee. On the left, no one wanted the extreme partisan nature of the “whistleblower” to be revealed, nor did they want him to come before congress and have to face questions from Republicans.

Prior to filing his “whistleblower complaint,” Ciaramella met with members of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s staff,  which included two recent hires, former Obama-era NSC staffers Abigail Grace and Sean Misko.  Both Grace and Misko joined Schiff’s Intelligence Committee staff in August of 2019.

At first, the Chairman insisted that the “whistleblower” should come before congress and share his testimony.

But as soon as Ciaramella’s partisanship and collaboration with Schiff’s staff was made public, Democrats quickly changed their tune, arguing that the complainant’s testimony was no longer needed.  Since then, they’ve held all of the depositions behind closed doors.

On Tuesday, Schiff prevented Republican lawmakers from asking “star witness” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (widely believed to be the primary source for the whistleblower) questions regarding who he spoke with following President Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Fox News host Sean Hannity opened his show Wednesday talking about the RCI’s report and demanding that GOP find out if the “whistleblower” was indeed a deep state operative working on yet another anti-Trump political hit job.

Following the release of the “whistleblower’s” identity, Ciaramella’s legal team issued a statement saying they can “neither confirm nor deny the identity of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower.”

Attorneys Mark Zaid and Andrew Bakaj went on to caution against speculation, claiming that it can cause harm to any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower.

“Disclosure of the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower places that individual and their family in great physical danger,” read the statement. “Such behavior is at the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.”

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About Debra Heine

Debra Heine is a conservative Catholic mom of six and longtime political pundit. She has written for several conservative news websites over the years, including Breitbart and PJ Media.

Photo: M. Borchi/DEA/Getty Images

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