Earlier this month, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence published the unredacted name of a man alleged to be the so-called whistleblower who helped launch impeachment proceedings against President Trump, according to a report on the federalist.com web site.

Edited by: JV Staff

The Washington Examiner reported that in September, the whistleblower accused Trump of abusing the presidency by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. The complaint is now the focus of Democratic-led impeachment proceedings.

The Washington Examiner revealed that Eric Ciaramella, 33, is a career CIA analyst, was Ukraine director on the NSC from at least 2016 until the summer of 2017. The publication also reported that Ciaramella was close friends while working in the Obama Whitehouse with a key aide to Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman. Both officials arrived during the Obama administration and left during the Trump administration. The key aide was identified as Sean Misko, 37. He was the director for the Gulf States at the National Security Council from 2015 until the first half of 2018.

Schiff initially denied he had any knowledge about the complaint prior to its filing in mid-August, saying on Sep. 17: “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.” But it was later found that this statement was false and a member of his staff had spoken to the whistleblower before the complaint was filed on Aug. 12, according to the Washington Examiner report.

Before joining the NSC, Misko worked in the Obama administration as a member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff for deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, who became Hillary Clinton’s senior foreign policy adviser during her 2016 presidential campaign, according to the Washington Examiner.

Ciaramella and Misko were described to the Washington Examiner as workplace friends who had similarly antagonistic attitudes toward the Trump administration and were witnessed by a former National Security Council official, like Ciaramella, a nonpolitical appointee, to frequently be around one another.

According to a report on the RealClear Politics web site, Ciaramella was long suspected of deliberately attempting to damage President Trump’s foreign policy from the inside and had access to policy information far beyond his regional expertise, according to former National Security Council officials.

The One America News web site reported that a newly surfaced photo shows Ciaramella shaking hands in the Oval Office with former President Barack Obama. It was discovered on a website for a friend’s 2018 wedding and was obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The image has reportedly been making the rounds among the president’s GOP allies, who claimed it shows a political bias against the president, as was reported by OAN.

“This picture raises serious questions about how this sham impeachment process started,” a senior Trump administration official told The Washington Examiner. “It’s no surprise that Schiff has now changed his story about letting the falsely labeled whistleblower testify.”

At the time the photo was taken, Ciaramella allegedly worked as the National Security Council’s Ukraine director. Critics of the impeachment inquiry have raised questions about Ciaramella’s ties to other Obama-era officials.

Brad Johnson, a former CIA official, and the head of intelreform.org told a OAN news anchor in interview that Ciaramella was a student at Yale University and would consistently protest for left wing causes and even demonstrated in support of a Muslim Brotherhood professor. Johnson said that Yale is a typical recruitment ground for the CIA. He said that Ciaramella was recruited by the CIA which is how he had received a position at the NSC. He added that while at the NSC, Ciaramella become their “go to” guy for all things related to the Ukraine, which is how he got involved in this process.

Johnson said that Ciaramella was handpicked by former CIA Chief John Brennan

The Federalist reported that during HPSCI testimony, William Taylor, the charge d’affairs of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, was asked by a staff lawyer on the committee whether the name Eric Ciaramella was familiar to him.

“Does a person by the name of Eric Ciaramella ring a bell for you?” asked Steve Castor, a committee staff counsel asked Taylor during a deposition on October 22. “It doesn’t,” Taylor responded.

“So, to your knowledge, you never had any communications with somebody by that name?”

“Correct,” Taylor said.

The transcript of that exchange, which was not redacted, was published and publicly released by Schiff’s committee last Wednesday.