Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett indicated the alleged Ukraine whistleblower could be “implicated” in the Justice Department inspector general’s report on possible abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In a report last week, Real Clear Investigations named CIA officer Eric Ciaramella as possibly being the whistleblower whose complaint sparked impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
A post on Jarrett’s personal website, authored by “staff” and shared by his verified Twitter account, said a key takeaway was the “reported direct relationship” Ciaramella had with former President Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and national security adviser Susan Rice, as well as “the “Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.”
This “makes them a likely candidate to be at the very least called as a witness in the cases that are likely to start following the FISA report,” the post said, “In addition, his area of expertise is reportedly Russia and Ukraine; two of the reported locations where information used in the anti-Trump Russian Dossier was ‘gathered.’ The name that Real Clear Investigations revealed is also listed as a source in one of Robert Mueller’s footnotes in his report.”
The post said if the information in the RCI report is true, “it is possible that this ‘whistleblower’ could be one of the individuals who might need a defense lawyer in the coming weeks when the findings of the FISA report are made public.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced in mid-September the completion of his year-and-a-half investigation into whether federal officials abused the FISA process to obtain warrants to surveil onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. He provided a draft copy of the report to the Justice Department and FBI for a classification review, and a public copy of the report is expected to be released to the public sometime around Thanksgiving or later.
As this process continues, Attorney General William Barr is overseeing U.S. Attorney John Durham’s criminal review of the origins of the Russia investigation, and Brennan is said to be a key figure under scrutiny.
Ciaramella, a career CIA analyst, was Ukraine director on the National Security Council during the end of the Obama administration and remained there during the early months of the Trump administration when he was briefly acting senior director for European and Russian affairs.
Andrew Bakaj and Mark Zaid, lawyers for the whistleblower, refuse to confirm the identity of their client even as such high-profile figures as Donald Trump Jr. have named Ciaramella as the whistleblower.
“Identifying any suspected name for the whistleblower will place their family at risk of serious harm. We will not confirm or deny any name that is published or promoted by supporters of the President. Disclosure of any name undermines the integrity of the whistleblower system and will deter any future whistleblowers,” they said in a statement Wednesday. “We will note, however, that publication or promotion of a name shows the desperation to deflect from the substance of the whistleblower complaint. It will not relieve the President of the need to address the substantive allegation, all of which have been substantially proven to be true.”
[Read more: Vindman and whistleblower still work together on US policy toward Ukraine]
