Well, Happy Halloween.

The whistleblower is now pretty well outed by investigative journalist Paul Sperry, and it's underwhelming. He's been identified as one Eric Ciaramella, 33, prep school grad, Yalie, Obama backwash, political operative, and fanatic Trump-hater. Hardly the Mister Probity concerned about national security that's been painted.

Sperry did the digging but pointed out that that the man's identity had been an open secret in the Beltway, with mainstream media doing their darnedest to keep his name from being attached to his rather spectacular charges.

Federal documents reveal that the 33-year-old Ciaramella, a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia "collusion" investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Ciaramella's name should be out there because it's relevant whether all the hearsay in his legally couched charge was actually made in good faith or was just another leftist smear job under cover of government mechanisms, same as the Steele dossier.

Based on Sperry's digging, it certainly looks like the latter.

From Sperry's reporting, we learn that this creep wasn't trying to make anything better within government, which is what whistleblower protections are for. He was just another leftist trying to overturn the 2016 election, and it dated from way back, starting with his propensity to leak.

In May 2017, Ciaramella went "outside his chain of command," according to a former NSC co-worker, to send an email alerting another agency that Trump happened to hold a meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey, who led the Trump-Russia investigation. The email also noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had phoned the president a week earlier. Contents of the email appear to have ended up in the media, which reported Trump boasted to the Russian officials about firing Comey, whom he allegedly called "crazy, a real nut job." In effect, Ciaramella helped generate the "Putin fired Comey" narrative, according to the research dossier making the rounds in Congress, a copy of which was obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Ciaramella allegedly argued that "President Putin suggested that President Trump fire Comey," the report said. "In the days after Comey's firing, this presidential action was used to further political and media calls for the standup [sic] of the special counsel to investigate 'Russia collusion.'"

Not long after that, he got kicked out of the NSC for suspected leaking, something other people have been jailed for. It raises questions as to why the heck this guy even ended up at CIA, drawing a likely six-figure salary and big bennies. He doesn't even sound security clearance–worthy, given his propensity to leak. Tight-lipped he wasn't.

And maybe that has a lot to do with his past politics, unimpeachably Democratic and leftist — which would amount to the real reason Democrats are protecting him. How bad was it? Sperry writes:

A CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine, Ciaramella was detailed over to the National Security Council from the agency in the summer of 2015, working under Susan Rice, President Obama's national security adviser. He also worked closely with the former vice president. Federal records show that Biden's office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other invited guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper. Several U.S. officials told RealClearInvestigations that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House. Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when the vice president was President Obama's "point man" for Ukraine. A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the NSC by Brennan.

Rice, Brennan, Biden... After that, he started hanging out and plotting with Rep. Adam Schiff. With the collapse of the Mueller report, that was then the place to be...

The whistleblower filed his "urgent" report against Trump with the I.C. inspector general on Aug. 12, but it was not publicly released until Sept. 26. Prior to filing, he had met with Schiff's Democratic staff for "guidance." At first, the California lawmaker denied the contacts, but later admitted that his office did, in fact, meet with the whistleblower early on. Earlier this year, Schiff recruited two of Ciaramella's closest allies at the NSC — both whom were also Obama holdovers — to join his committee staff. He hired one, Sean Misko, in August — the same month the whistleblower complaint was filed. During closed-door depositions taken in the impeachment inquiry, Misko has been observed handing notes to the lead counsel for the impeachment inquiry, Daniel Goldman, as he asks questions of Trump administration witnesses, officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings told RealClearInvestigations. Republicans participating in the restricted inquiry hearings have been asking witnesses about Ciaramella and repeatedly injecting his name into the deposition record, angering Schiff and Democrats, who sources say are planning to scrub the references to Ciaramella from any transcripts of the hearings they may agree to release. "Their reaction tells you something," said one official familiar with the inquiry. For example, sources said Ciaramella's name was invoked by GOP committee members during the closed-door testimony of former NSC official Fiona Hill on Oct. 14. Ciaramella worked with Hill, another Obama holdover, in the West Wing.

Hill was brought on by either Gen. H.R. McMaster or Gen. Michael Flynn, but she did work for Obama earlier, so "holdover" might not be the right word. However, it's obvious now that Hill was a Trump-hater based on her depositions to the Schiff committee. She had Ciaramella on her staff and the pair of them, like a couple of crooks, obviously egged each other on in mutual reinforcement of their loathing of Trump, and it could have been more than just these two.

It actually makes me wonder now if Hill resigned her post, cleared off her Linkedin profile of any association with President Trump (it's not known if she even had it up, but for sure it's not there now) and left office just before the call that Ciamamella made his whistleblower complaint about, in order to be available to testify for the Schiff committee. Current Trump officials are not participating thus far, but past ones who hate Trump have been rolling forward, though none have offered anything like a smoking gun against him. House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes has said earlier than none of them had the goods.

Because all of the news about this whistleblower the Democrats are trying to shield reveals a coordinated strategy of leaks and legal plottings. The only reason to keep Ciaramella's name secret would be to shield the Democrats themselves from scrutiny about their pre-planned and coordinated plottings with this Trump-hating deep stater, because this whistleblowing wasn't about malfeasance, it was all about political power.

It was all coordinated, it was all pre-planned with Schiff. The leaks, the hangings out with like-minded officials, the evidence of political connections, the coziness and wonderfully advantageous maneuvers with Schiff point to a tainted, politically motivated and very unreliable witness, a guy who's supposedly a dispassionate CIA analyst but now exposed as a wannabe political operative with a very tainted political patron. What we learn ultimately from Sperry is that Schiff needs to recuse himself from his sham because he was right in the middle of it from the beginning and his efforts to keep Ciaramella's identity secret were efforts to protect himself. As for Ciaramella, he ought to be fired, and working now for an organization more compatible with his inclinations, political operativity and bureaucratic dishonesty ... some place like Fusion GPS.

Read the whole thing here.