Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh mocked the CIA officer accused of being the whistleblower that kicked off the impeachment process against President Trump for looking similar to a pajama-clad young man featured in an Obama-era advertisement for healthcare.
Eric Ciaramella, 33, who is bearded and bespectacled, was reported by RealClearInvestigations to be the official who alleged in a complaint that Trump had initiated quid pro quo in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This guy’s a leaker. He’s not a whistleblower,” Limbaugh said in the Thursday installment of his nationally broadcast radio show. “His name is Eric Ciaramella. He’s 30 some odd years old. I’ve got a picture. It looks like the pajama boy in the Obama ad that they ran back during I think the first term.”
The picture accompanying the report was from 2004, when Ciaramella was 18.
The “pajama boy” referenced by Limbaugh became famous from a photograph posted online by Obama-supporting nonprofit group Organizing for Action in 2013 that featured one of the organization’s employees Ethan Krupp dressed in pajamas and drinking from a mug. The photo, which was intended as inspiration to get younger Americans to sign up for Obamacare, included the caption: “Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance. #GetTalking.” The photo, which was originally shared by President Barack Obama’s Twitter account, was widely shared and ridiculed online.
Limbaugh, 68, reading excerpts from the RealClearInvestigation report, said: “Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House,” Limbaugh said. “Why the hell was he still there? What do you mean, ‘held over’? This guy — I’ve probably seen this guy there. I’ve been to the Oval Office two or three times since Trump’s been president. I’ve been in the West Wing. I’ve probably seen this guy slithering around. It never even registered. Next time I go, I’m gonna keep a sharp eye for people I think might be John Brennan holdover plants, ’cause they’re obviously slithering all over the place.”
The radio host argued that Ciaramella was allied with Joe Biden, who was vice president when Ciaramella worked at the White House, and John Brennan, CIA director at the time of Ciaramella being detailed there and subsequently a fierce critic of Trump.
Limbaugh said of Ciaramella: “This guy was involved from the get-go, starting in 2016, doing John Brennan’s bidding from the West Wing on furthering the whole Trump-Russia collusion operation of which there wasn’t one! As per the esteemed Robert J. Mueller XIV or whatever Robert J. Mueller he is.”
Ciaramella, a career CIA analyst, was Ukraine director for the National Security Council during the last term of the Obama administration and remained in the position after Trump took office in 2017. He was briefly acting senior director for European and Russian affairs before Fiona Hill took that post.
Lawyers for the whistleblower would neither confirm nor deny that Ciaramella was the person that they were representing. “Our client is legally entitled to anonymity,” attorneys Mark Zaid and Andrew Bakaj said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “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. Any physical harm the individual and/or their family suffers as a result of disclosure means that the individuals and publications reporting such names will be personally liable for that harm. Such behavior is at the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.”
