President Trump claimed that his administration and the Republican Party are besting the Democrats despite the current impeachment investigation.
The president made the remarks while speaking to reporters on the South Lawn prior to his departure to Georgia on Friday morning.
“[People] really became angry because it’s a hoax,” Trump stated. “And I’ll tell you, the whistleblower, I call him the fake whistleblower. He gave a fake report of my phone call. And when I did it, all of a sudden when I released that call, all of a sudden, everybody disappeared. The whistleblower disappeared. Whatever happened to the second whistleblower? Why isn’t the first whistleblower going to testify anymore? You know why? Because everything he wrote in that report almost was a lie because he made a phony phone call.”
He went on to call the whistleblower “a disgrace to our country” and attacked Mark Zaid, the whistleblower’s lawyer, for anti-Trump tweets that he wrote two years ago.
“[Rep. Adam Schiff] made up a speech, and he put my voice in it. He made up a speech that had nothing to do with what I said. Adam Schiff is a corrupt politician that’s not giving us due process, not giving us lawyers, and despite all that, we’re kicking their ass,” Trump said before walking away.
The whistleblower is alleged to be Eric Ciaramella, 33, a career CIA analyst.
He 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. On Oct. 7, the Washington Examiner reported that Ciaramella is now a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council, reporting to the director of national intelligence.
