Ivanka Trump said the identity of the Ukraine whistleblower was irrelevant to her father’s impeachment.
Her comments appeared to mark a difference of opinion with her older brother Donald Trump Jr., 41, who identified the whistleblower as CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, and their father President Trump, who has said the whistleblower should be “exposed and questioned.”
Ivanka Trump, 38, a White House adviser, told the Associated Press that she did not believe the identity of the whistleblower should be a priority of the effort to thwart impeachment. “To me, [the whistleblower’s identity] is not particularly relevant aside from what the motivation behind all of this was,” she explained.
She noted that the whistleblower did not have firsthand knowledge when he or she filed the report, adding, “The whistleblower shouldn’t be a substantive part of the conversation.” Trump claimed the impeachment effort was Democrats’ attempt at “overturning the results of the 2016 election.”
“Rather than wait, under a year, until the people can decide for themselves based on his record and based on his accomplishments, this new effort has commenced,” she said.
[Read more: Alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella was cited in key passage of Mueller report]
RealClearInvestigations identified the whistleblower as Ciaramella on Oct. 30. He was the Ukraine director on the National Security Council at the end of the Obama administration and early in the Trump administration, where he worked on Russian affairs. The Washington Examiner reported on Nov. 6 that Ciaramella now works under the director of national intelligence as a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council. During the Obama administration, Ciaramella was Biden’s guest at a State Department banquet.
Trump has called Ciaramella a “radical” with ‘no credibility.’”
