Ukraine whistleblower biases concealed from House investigators by intel watchdog, transcript shows

The admitted, potential biases that a Ukraine impeachment whistleblower 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.

The long-secret transcripts were from a September 2019 unclassified session and an October 2019 classified session that were held to examine then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson’s role in the handling of an alleged whistleblower complaint. 

The missive was written by an anonymous intelligence officer, identified as Eric Ciaramella, in a saga that ultimately led to the first successful impeachment efforts by House Democrats against President Donald Trump in December 2019. 

Trump was acquitted by the Senate in early 2020.

Memos declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and released by Just the News on Sunday, written by investigators for the intelligence community inspector general who first handled the CIA analyst's complaint, flagged the Ukraine whistleblower for having a "potential for bias." 

The whistleblower apologized for misleading the probe about such matters as his prior contact with staffers on the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee, criticizing a GOP congressmen, recounting that he asked to hide his complaint from Republicans on the committee and close links to Joe Biden’s efforts in Ukraine.

The newly-released memos also laid out multiple self-admitted potential biases tied to Ciaramella’s Democratic 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 the revelations were not made public until Sunday, and many were concealed from House investigators when the intelligence community inspector general appeared before members in October 2019.

During the second since-declassified House Intelligence Committee session, on October 4, 2019, the newly-released transcripts show Atkinson stated: “As part of the complainant's interview, I had directed the interviewers to ask the complainant to self-disclose potential bias information. 

The complainant self-disclosed that the complainant was a registered member of the Democratic Party. The complainant also self-disclosed that the complainant had a prior professional relationship with one of the Democratic Presidential candidates for the 2020 election.”

The whistleblower complaint centered on a July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The call was the day after Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony on the findings of his investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

The inspector general did not include details relating to Ciaramella’s work with then-Vice President Joe Biden, the whistleblower’s long-term focus on Ukraine, Ciaramella’s travel to Ukraine with Biden, and the whistleblower’s presence at discussions about the alleged corruption of Ukrainian prosecutors – all admitted by Ciaramella to watchdog investigators, all related to the allegations raised by Trump with Zelensky, and all redacted from what was provided to the House Intelligence Committee at the time in 2019. Atkinson redacted other potential biases too.

“There have been many questions and concerns about these Atkinson transcripts, which have been withheld from the American public for far too long,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said in a Monday statement. “I hope that the release of these transcripts allows the American people to make their own determinations about their content. Thank you to Director Gabbard and her team for moving these so quickly through the declassification process and helping the Committee get them to the American people.”

The GOP-led House Intelligence Committee said Monday that, following a security review from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence led by Tulsi Gabbard, the committee received the declassified transcripts from the ODNI on Friday and was releasing them after the weekend. 

The committee had voted in late March for the Atkinson transcripts to be released.

“I directed the interviewers – which was my practice as a former prosecutor with all witnesses, is to ask the witness, if someone wanted to argue that you as a witness had a bias, what could they point to?” Atkinson told the House Intelligence Committee during the classified session in October 2019. “So, basically, that was the question I asked the interviewers to ask of the complainant. If someone wanted to make a claim that you were biased in any way, what could they point to? That’s the question that was – I wasn't there, but that's the essence of what I wanted the interviewers to ask.”

A yet-redacted questioner said during the 2019 session that “we will enter this interview of complainant [Ciaramella] dated August 20 into the record” as an exhibit. The exhibit appears to be a redacted version of a largely unredacted memo obtained by Just the News and made public Sunday.

“On page 27 of that, there is a section called ‘Potential for Bias’ and there appear to be three topics that the complainant mentioned could be used against [redacted] to demonstrate political bias,” the questioner told Atkinson, going on to note that two of the three buckets of Ciaramella’s self-admitted potential biases were largely redacted.

“The first says, ‘first complainant worked with…’ and then the remainder is redacted,” the questioner noted.

The largely-unredacted version of the memo, only released to the public half a decade later, stated that “first, Complainant worked closely with Vice President Biden as an expert on Ukraine. [Redacted] travelled with Biden to Ukraine and was part of conversations where [Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy] Lutsenko corruption was discussed.” 

Lutsenko had taken over the position after Shokin was fired following pressure from Biden.

Trump and his allies argue Biden improperly used his position as vice president to pressure Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Shokin, to protect son Biden from an investigation into the corrupt Ukrainian energy giant Burisma, where he held a lucrative position. 

Democrats said the focus on Burisma was part of an effort to hurt Trump’s main rival in the 2020 contest. The former vice president had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire Shokin, who was criticized by some in the West for not doing enough to crack down on corruption. 

Biden boasted to The Atlantic in 2016 and to a Council of Foreign Relations panel in 2018 that he ordered Ukraine to fire Shokin or else the White House would renege on a commitment to provide significant aid.

The redacted questioner told Atkinson during the 2019 session, “You've now said today that the complainant worked closely with one of the presidential candidates for the 2020 election” and asked “is that what is redacted in the first bullet point here?”

“Yes,” Atkinson told the House investigators.

The redacted questioner noted to Atkinson in 2019 that “the second” section on Ciaramella’s biases “is entirely redacted.”

“Second, Complainant worked for the President Trump White House for [Redacted] as an [redacted] was then asked by [Redacted] to be [redacted],” the more unredacted version of the memo made public on Sunday said. “Complainant said this was a very stressful job and [redacted] became the target of right-wing bloggers, such as [Redacted], and conspiracy theorists, and later received death threats, which caused [redacted] to leave [redacted] White House position and return to CIA. [Redacted] then accepted [redacted]. Complainant believes that [Redacted], a former colleague at the NSC and current HPSCI staffer for Nunes, provided [Redacted] with information about Complainant for use in his threatening blogs.”

Atkinson told the House investigators in the 2019 session that the second has to do with the complainant's prior official duties and would or could lead to his identity.

Multiple outlets had reported on Ciaramella’s departure from the Trump NSC well before he filed his whistleblower complaint.

Foreign Policy reported in 2017, the New Yorker reported in 2018, and Politico reported in March 2019 – all prior to his filing a whistleblower complaint – that Ciaramella had been scrutinized by right wing bloggers as a suspected leaker and had left the NSC early.

Steve Bannon, a member of the Trump NSC in the first half of 2017, told Vice News in November 2019, “When I was in the White House, there was a number of people on the National Security Council – he eventually, the named individual, eventually got let go, I believe because people were suspicious, not me, but other people around him, were suspicious about his leaking, and that’s why he was let go.”

The redacted questioner said during the 2019 session that “the third” indicator of bias “is that the complainant is a registered Democrat.”

Atkinson went on to tell the House Intelligence Committee repeatedly in October 2019 that he and Ciaramella’s CIA supervisors did not believe the whistleblower’s complaint had been motivated by politics.

“I thought ... the reports that the complainant worked on were in line with the views of the Intelligence Community,” the watchdog said.

Atkinson continued: “Some of the work that the complainant did in [redacted] official capacity ... could be seen as political, but the complainant's role in those reports, as far as I could tell, was not."

The inspector general said “correct” when asked whether he was denying that Ciaramella’s Ukraine-related work for Biden and the Obama administration could have indicated political or partisan bias when filing the complaint.

Atkinson replied: "right” when asked whether he had “deemed there to be two potential issues that may or may not reflect some degree of political bias, the fact that he or she had previously worked for a candidate” and that the whistleblower “is a registered Democrat” – seemingly underselling the full extent of Ciaramella’s potential biases.

“Just to be clear, I am not saying that the other – the information that's redacted is irrelevant information,” the watchdog added. “It is information that, as the investigation goes on, it might be relevant information. And I understood that that information would become available to all — to the investigators in what I will call phase two of the investigation when other people got involved, but that information I did not deem necessary to include in my transmittal letter and it did not impact my credibility determination.”

Atkinson additionally said: “I also want to make it clear that I never considered the whistleblower to be politically biased. What I wanted to do was alert the Acting DNI to evidence of an arguable political bias, but I also — I am more convinced now than before, though, based on the transcript, that the complainant was not politically biased in any way that, as far as I can tell, influenced the substance of his or her disclosures.”

Media leaks from October 2019 appeared to resemble a limited hangout on Ciaramella’s biases.

“Breaking –  A source familiar with the investigation prompted by the whistleblower tells me that the ‘indicia of bias of an arguable political bias on the part’ of the whistleblower referred to by the Intel Community IG, is that the whistleblower is a Registered Democrat,” CNN host Jake Tapper tweeted in early October 2019.

Ciaramella lawyer Mark Zaid tweeted in response: “I understand @jaketapper at @CNN reported my client's pol bias, as stated in @ODNIgov IG memo, was nothing more than #whistleblower registered Democrat. We won't comment on identifying info but if true, give me a break! Bias? Seriously? Most ppl are.”

“Partisanship not involved. Don't let anyone argue differently,” Zaid tweeted.

But Ciaramella’s Democratic registration was not the only nor possibly the most significant indicator of bias.

CNN also reported at the time that Zaid and Bakaj told the outlet that the indicia of bias could potentially also include that the whistleblower as a government employee came “into contact with presidential candidates from both parties in their roles as elected officials – not as candidates.”

The Washington Examiner soon reported a few days later that the concerns about bias weren’t just about Ciaramella’s Democratic registration, but about his professional relationship with an unnamed Democratic presidential candidate – closer to the reality of Ciaramella’s biases, but still not close to the full picture.

“Under questioning from Republicans during last Friday’s impeachment inquiry interview with Atkinson, the inspector general revealed that the whistleblower’s possible bias was not that he was simply a registered Democrat,” the outlet wrote. “It was that he had a significant tie to one of the Democratic presidential candidates currently vying to challenge President Trump in next year’s election.”

“The IG said [the whistleblower] worked or had some type of professional relationship with one of the Democratic candidates,” one source told the outlet.

“The IG said the whistleblower had a professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates,” a second source told the outlet.

“What [Atkinson] said was that the whistleblower self-disclosed that he was a registered Democrat and that he had a prior working relationship with a current 2020 Democratic presidential candidate,” a third source told the outlet.

The outlet wrote that “all three sources said Atkinson did not identify the Democratic candidate with whom the whistleblower had a connection” and so “it is unclear what the working or professional relationship between the two was.”

Ciaramella’s connections to Joe Biden – and his role in the exact Ukraine controversies which were the subject of the Ukraine impeachment effort – were not fully revealed during the impeachment proceedings.

The newly-declassified memos released by Just the News on Sunday show the intelligence community watchdog’s investigators were also acutely aware the whistleblower’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 whistleblower 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 revelations in the declassified memos are perhaps the most explosive, but not the only revelations about the whistleblower that have emerged in recent years, with many of the details about Ciaramella becoming public months or years after the Ukraine-related impeachment effort against Trump.

Ciaramella had been listed as the director for Baltic and Eastern European Affairs on the Obama NSC and as having been affiliated with the Interagency Policy Committee – a task force created to advise the Obama White House on whether Ukraine was cleaning up its endemic corruption and deserved more Western foreign aid.

 GOP Senate investigators and the conservative activist group Judicial Watch later released White House visitor logs detailing Ciaramella’s meetings at the Obama White House, including ones related to Ukraine. 

Just the News also provided further detail on Ciaramella’s Ukraine-related meetings with Joe Biden and the whistleblower’s critical role in advancing the Obama Administration’s Ukraine efforts, which were spearheaded by Joe Biden.

Ciaramella’s key role in pushing the Biden-led Obama Administration efforts in Ukraine did not fully emerge until after the Trump impeachment effort – and, as the newly-released transcripts show, it was among the many elements concealed during the House Intelligence Committee’s questioning of the intelligence community watchdog who initially handled the whistleblower’s explosive complaint.