House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff refused to answer a question during President Trump’s impeachment trial about why he hired a former colleague of the alleged Ukraine whistleblower.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, asked the opposing legal teams on Thursday why the California Democrat hired former National Security Council official Sean Misko, 37, the day after the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that became an inciting incident for impeachment and what role he has played in the impeachment investigation.
Schiff, who is the lead impeachment manager, answered first by condemning the “attacks” on his staff and called the reporting on his staff a bunch of “smears.”
“I will not dignify those smears on my staff by giving them any credence whatsoever, nor will I share any information that I believe could or could not lead to the identification of the whistleblower,” he said.
.@RepAdamSchiff: “This question refers to allegation in a newspaper article which are circulating smears on my staff and ask me to respond to those smears. I will not dignify those smears on my staff by giving them any credence whatsoever.” pic.twitter.com/femseSnEDJ
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 30, 2020
Misko was the director for the Gulf States at the National Security Council between 2015 until the first half of 2018. The Washington Examiner has established that the whistleblower is a CIA officer who was on the NSC during the Obama administration and worked on Ukrainian issues with Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic candidate, when he was vice president.
Republicans and conservative media figures believe CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella is the whistleblower whose complaint sparked impeachment proceedings, and the Washington Examiner was told by a former senior White House official that both had a close, “bro-like” relationship while working at the NSC together. According to a RealClearInvestigations report, which Johnson cited, Misko once told Ciaramella, “‘We need to do everything we can to take out the president.’”
Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the Senate impeachment trial, has rejected any question that name the alleged whistleblower, prompting Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, to read Ciaramella’s name to reporters on Thursday. Johnson’s question mentions the alleged whistleblower but did not state a name.
Schiff argued that Republicans are using press reports about the alleged whistleblower to “smear” his staff and spoke about the need to protect whistleblowers in the government, particularly those in the intelligence community because they deal with classified information.
“When you jeopardize a whistleblower by trying to out them this way, then you are threatening not just this whistleblower but the entire system,” Schiff said. “The president would like nothing better than that. And I’m sure the president is applauding this question because he wants his pound of flesh. And he wants to punish anyone that has the courage to stand up to him.”
Schiff has faced accusations of a “cover-up” because the whistleblower met with a member of his staff before filing the complaint and because he walked back a claim in an interview last year in which he said, “We have not spoken directly to the whistleblower.”
On Thursday, Schiff denied knowing the identity of the whistleblower but declared the whistleblower “should be every one of us.”
