Congressional investigators want access to an email sent by the alleged Ukraine whistleblower that is cited in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, according to Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
Ingraham reported on her show Tuesday evening that this May 2017 email could show the CIA analyst who is alleged to have lodged a complaint that sparked impeachment proceedings has a history of cooking up evidence to set up President Trump.
“Sources tell The Ingraham Angle that congressional investigators are asking the White House for a May 2017 email from the same alleged whistleblower,” Ingraham said. “Sources say that this email may show that the person who kicked off the impeachment sham previously manufactured evidence against President Trump, and a footnote in the Mueller report tells the story.”
The email appears as a footnote in Mueller’s report, where it discusses Trump’s May 10 meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office, one day after he fired FBI Director James Comey. It was at this meeting, according to a New York Times report on May 19, that Trump called Comey “crazy, a real nut job” and acknowledged he felt “great pressure” because of the investigation into Russia’s attempted interference in the campaign. Two days earlier, Mueller was appointed as special counsel to take up the investigation into whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. His team ultimately found no criminal conspiracy.
The May 10 email was sent by “Ciaramella,” which likely was CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, the former National Security Council official who some Republicans and conservative media figures believe is the Ukraine whistleblower, to another agency.
According to Mueller’s report, the email discussed the planning process for the “working visit” by Lavrov, including a phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The meeting had been planned on May 2, 2017, during a telephone call between the President and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the meeting date was confirmed on May 5, 2017, the same day the President dictated ideas for the Comey termination letter to [White House adviser] Stephen Miller,” the footnote said.
The letter was sent to “Kelly et al,” which former colleagues told RealClearInvestigations was then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who later became Trump’s chief of staff. That same October report talks of a research dossier circulating through Congress that alleges Ciaramella helped create the “Putin fired Comey” narrative and a former National Security Council colleague who accuses Ciaramella of going “outside his chain of command” in sending the May 10 email.
Ingraham’s report Tuesday was part of a series on the alleged whistleblower. Last week, she reported a chain of State Department emails, which stemmed from a standard request for comment from New York Times journalist Ken Vogel, tying Ciaramella to a January 2016 meeting at the Obama White House with Ukrainian prosecutors that was predicated, in part, on discussing Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he held a $50,000-per-month position on the board.
Hunter Biden, 49, is the son of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Trump and his allies believe the elder Biden orchestrated a scheme to protect his son in which he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, because of an investigation into Burisma.
However, Shokin was widely seen as corrupt, and the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other allies sought his ouster. Biden, who, in pushing for Shokin to be fired, was repeating U.S. policy that had been set out by Washington’s ambassador to Kyiv in the preceding months, has dubbed the corruption allegations as “false, debunked conspiracy theories.” Shokin was fired in March 2016.
Impeachment was spurred by the emergence of a whistleblower complaint, which the intelligence community inspector general determined to be urgent and credible, about a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which the American leader pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate the Bidens and other Democrats.
House Republicans are investigating Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Community inspector general who notified Congress of the whistleblower complaint. Democrats have not released the transcript of Atkinson’s October deposition despite intense pressure by Republicans.
Trump faces two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate trial is underway, and Democrats are pushing for witnesses. They particularly want to hear testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton after reports about his upcoming book containing fresh allegations of Trump leveraging nearly $400 million in security aid to Ukraine to pressure Kyiv to help with investigations into his political rivals.
With centrist Republican senators on the fence, Trump’s staunchest allies warn that if they vote to call witnesses, Hunter Biden and the whistleblower will be among those they seek.
“The first witness I would want, if you’re going to go down this road, is the whistleblower, the individual who started this whole thing. We have no idea who this individual is, who the people he talked to as the prime sources, because he wasn’t on the phone call. He didn’t have first-hand knowledge. So, that would be the one I would want to call,” Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, a member of Trump’s impeachment team, told Fox News on Wednesday.
Democrats have argued that witness testimony and documents have moved the impeachment case beyond the whistleblower. Lawyers for the whistleblower have warned that identifying their client would put that person’s life in danger.
