House Democrats are continuing to press forward with plans to impeach President Trump — pretending there is any merit whatsoever to their claims. While that is happening, more and more information is coming to light about the real criminal scandal at the foundation of their most recent claim regarding Trump’s July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Not all of the information coming to light is new; some of it has been reported previously and has recently been hidden in plain sight. Some of that information may well explain why an anonymous “whistleblower” was so motivated to fabricate a complaint falsely claiming that President Trump had pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter ahead of the 2020 presidential election as part of a quid pro quo agreement.

That “whistleblower” has now been reported to be DNC-connected CIA analyst and former National Security Council staffer Eric Ciaramella. His connection to the case does not begin with his second-hand knowledge (which he claimed as first-hand knowledge on the complaint form) of the president’s alleged (and debunked) quid pro quo pressuring of Zelensky. In fact, he has been intricately involved in the underlying possible crime / certain cover-up involving Hunter Biden’s employment with Burisma Holdings.

Burisma Holdings is the Ukrainian oil and gas company owned by former minister of ecology and natural resources for Ukraine, Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky was under criminal investigation in Ukraine for corruption and money laundering. At the same time, Hunter Biden was being paid more than $50,000 per month for a board member position at Burisma Holdings for which nothing in his resume (besides his surname) qualified him.

But just as the Ukrainian prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was prepared to interrogate all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden, he was fired as the result of then-Vice President Joe Biden threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless the firing was done immediately.

As this writer quoted in a comprehensive previous article on the subject, The Hill’s John Solomon reported, “Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made ‘specific plans’ for the investigation that ‘included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.’”

As Joe Biden has made clear in multiple statements, the plans to have Shokin fired were long in the making. His final (quid pro quo) threat to withhold the loan guarantees made by President Obama was far from the first time the Obama administration had sought to end the Burisma Holdings investigation, or at least contain it.

Enter (from stage extreme Left) Eric Ciaramella. Going back at least to January 2016, Ciaramella has been up to his neck in the scheme that he recently pretended to enter as a “concerned” “whistleblower,” according to reports by Gateway Pundit.

In fact, according to those reports — which include verifying documentation — he hosted a meeting at the Obama White House where Ukrainian officials were told to drop the investigation into Hunter Biden. Those reports point to a previous report by Investigative reporter John Solomon at The Hill. That report, from April, states:

U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU [Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau], then shut down.

Gateway Pundit goes on to report that “According to Stephen McIntyre the demand that Ukrainian top prosecutor Viktor Shokin be fired as a condition for IMF loan almost certainly originated with Biden staff. The demand was first announced to Ukrainian prosecutors at a January 19, 2016 meeting with US officials hosted by Eric Ciaramella.”

And while there is precious little doubt that Biden and the liberal mainstream media will shrug this off as a wild conspiracy theory, the report is backed by White House visitor logs, which show that Ciaramella hosted the meeting with Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko on January 19, 2016 in the Obama White House.

So, to boil it all down:

• Vice President Joe Biden’s son was over-employed by a corrupt oil and gas company in Ukraine at the very time that his father was handling financial aid and other relations with Ukraine.

• When Ukraine began investigating that company, the Obama administration in general and Biden in particular demanded that the investigation be stopped.

• Ciaramella booked a meeting room at the White House and hosted a meeting to facilitate strong-arming Ukrainian officials to bow to those demands.

• Joe Biden succeeded in getting Shokin fired and the investigation killed by holding a $1 billion gun to the head of Ukraine.

• Then, in July, when President Trump asked Ukrainian President Zelensky to look into the matter again, Ciaramella came forward as an anonymous “whistleblower” falsely claiming “first-hand” knowledge of President Trump pressuring Ukraine to reopen the investigation and offering a quid pro quo to sweeten the deal.

This is typical behavior from the Left. After actually doing something that is probably illegal and certainly unethical — and while standing on the brink of getting caught — they simply fabricate a narrative where one of their opponents (in this case, President Trump) is accused of the very corruption of which they are guilty.

In this particular case, Democrats seem to have been so sure of themselves that they didn’t even hesitate to use Ciaramella as the “whistleblower” even though (1) he did not have “first-hand” knowledge of the call Trump made to Zelensky, and (2) he was the very person who set up and hosted the meeting in 2016 where Obama officials demanded and end to the investigation involving Hunter Biden.

As good journalism continues to shine the light of truth into places Democrats would prefer stay dark, it appears that Democrats’ self assurance is misplaced.

Image: kentoh via iStock / Getty Images Plus