ealClear Investigations Suggests ‘Whistleblower’ Likely 33-Year-Old CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella

RealClearInvestigations on Wednesday published the name of the person they believe is most likely the “whistleblower” against President Trump: Eric Ciaramella, an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. The outlet reported that Ciaramella’s name has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, as well as at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. RealClearInvestigations also reported that House Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking questions about Ciaramella and “intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.” RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official’s status as a ‘whistleblower’ is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has ‘some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate’ — as the Intelligence Community Inspector General phrased it circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint. It said Ciaramella is 33-years-old, a registered Democrat who began working at the White House during the Obama administration and previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan. Ciaramella left the Trump administration’s National Security Council in mid-2017 over concerns about negative leaks to the media and then returned to the CIA, the outlet reported. “He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” a former NSC official told RealClearInvestigiations. The outlet also reported that Ciaramella huddled for “guidance” with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), including former NSC colleagues who now work for Schiff. Ciaramella also worked with a Democratic National Committee operative, Alexandra Chalupa, who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, and he invited her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues told RealClearInvestigations. “He knows her. He had her in the White House,” one former co-worker told the outlet. Read the entire article

William Barr Says US Attorney Investigating Trump-Russia Probe Origins Is Making ‘Great Progress’

Attorney General William Barr said Monday that the federal prosecutor leading an investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has made “great progress.”

Barr defended the prosecutor, John Durham, as having a “great reputation for non-partisanship” in an interview with Fox News.

He’s a by-the-book kind of guy. He’s thorough and fair, and I’m confident he’s going to get to the bottom of things,” Barr said of Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut.

Barr tapped Durham in May to lead an administrative review of U.S. agencies’ activities in the Trump-Russia probe. Little is known about the investigation, other than that Durham is looking at the activities of the FBI, CIA and foreign intelligence services related to the Trump campaign. Barr said earlier in 2019 that he believes “spying” occurred against the Trump campaign

Democrats have criticized the so-called “investigation of the investigators,” and accused Barr of acting as Trump’s personal lawyer.

But Barr denied acting on behalf of Trump, and said Durham is “in charge of the investigation.”

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Judge Orders DOJ To Give Mueller Grand Jury Material To House Democrats

The need for continued secrecy is minimal and thus easily outweighed by [House Judiciary Committee’s] compelling need for the material,” Howell said in the ruling.

“Tipping the scale even further toward disclosure is the public’s interest in a diligent and thorough investigation into, and in a final determination about, potentially impeachable conduct by the President described in the Mueller

The special counsel’s report was separated into two volumes: one that dealt with an investigation into whether Trump associates conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, and the other that focused on whether Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation.

The first volume of the report contained 240 redactions for grand jury material, according to Howell. The second volume contained far fewer redactions, largely because the obstruction portion of the special counsel’s investigation did not rely on grand jury proceedings.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel, said prosecutors were unable to establish the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, or that any Trump associates acted as agents of Russia.

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John Ratcliffe: Change In Status Of Durham Investigation Is ‘Not A Coincidence’

Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe said Sunday that it “is not a coincidence” the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation morphed into a criminal matter just as the Justice Department’s inspector general is set to release a report of FBI surveillance abuse against the Trump campaign.

Ratcliffe was responding to reports that John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, is conducting a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia probe.

I don’t believe in coincidences, and the end of the inspector general’s investigation and his impending report coming at the same time as the start of John Durham announcing that this is now a criminal probe is not a coincidence,” Ratcliffe, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Attorney General William Barr tasked Durham in May with conducting an administrative review of the matter. The pair traveled to Italy together in September to meet with Italian intelligence officials as part of the investigation

The shift in Durham’s investigation was reported Thursday, the same day Michael Horowitz, the DOJ inspector general, informed Congress that he is putting the finishing touches on a report of possible FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the investigation of the Trump campaign.

Horowitz said the report is “lengthy” and will be released with few redactions.

Republicans believe a lengthy report signals that the investigation has turned up wrongdoing.

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DOJ Has Quietly Been Publishing Documents Related To Trump-Russia Probe

• The Justice Department has quietly ramped up its release of documents related to the Trump-Russia probe.
• The agency in recent weeks has started publishing documents related to an array of topics, including Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr, and Peter Strzok.
• One document released Wednesday shows that former Trump lawyer John Dowd asked Rod Rosenstein to help investigate Fusion GPS.

The Justice Department has for weeks been quietly releasing internal agency emails and documents related to the Trump-Russia probe.

The documents include correspondence related to the Steele dossier, internal discussions about news coverage of the investigation, and even an email that a lawyer for President Donald Trump sent then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein urging an investigation of Fusion GPS.

The Justice Department published email correspondence Tuesday between Peter Strzok, the FBI official who opened the Trump-Russia probe, and Bruce Ohr, a Justice Department official who played a key role as middleman between the FBI and dossier author Christopher Steele.

DOJ published 140 pages of documents on its website Wednesday related to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired dossier author Christopher Steele on behalf of Democrats.

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Republicans Call Out Schiff For Flip-Flopping On Whistleblower Testimony

The top Republicans on three congressional committees leading an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump called out Rep. Adam Schiff Wednesday for reversing course on calling a CIA whistleblower to testify before Congress, according to a letter the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained.

The Republicans also asked Schiff to arrange public testimony from the whistleblower and any other individuals he relied on as part of an Aug. 12 complaint filed with the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) regarding Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.

“We are surprised by your announcement that the Committees will not receive testimony from the anonymous intelligence community employee whose complaint initiated the so-called impeachment inquiry,” wrote Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Devin Nunes of California and Michael McCaul of Texas in the letter to Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

They noted that before the House Intelligence Committee released the whistleblower complaint on Sept. 26, Schiff had committed to “very soon” calling the whistleblower to provide “unfiltered” testimony.

The Republicans said that Schiff, a California Democrat, reversed course “following revelations that the employee had a bias against President Donald Trump and that you had received a secret, early account of the allegations.”

The whistleblower, an unidentified CIA analyst, met with a staffer working for Schiff prior to filing his complaint with the ICIG, The New York Times reported on Oct. 2.

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Grassley Suspects ‘Deep State’ Is Responsible For Delay In FISA Abuse Report

Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley expressed frustration Monday at a months long delay in the release of the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on possible FBI surveillance abuse against the Trump campaign, questioning whether the “deep state” has somehow slowed the release of the document.

“All of the delays and excuses why the Horowitz IG FISA report isn’t public yet after several months of anticipation of its issues leads me to the suspicion it’s going to be ‘deep six’ by the deep state,” Grassley wrote on Twitter.

Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, began in March 2018 investigating whether the FBI complied with legal requirements in applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The bureau relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier in applications for the warrants, as well as for the main investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer, dug up dirt on the Trump campaign on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign. In the dossier, he alleged that Trump aides, including Page, worked with Kremlin operatives to influence the 2016 election. Steele also claimed that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump team and Russians.

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Brennan And Clapper To Be Interviewed As Part Of Investigation Into Russia Probe Origins

U.S. Attorney John Durham intends to interview former CIA Director John Brennan as part of his investigation into U.S. intelligence agencies’ activities in the Trump-Russia probe, according to NBC News.

Brennan told NBC News, where he is an analyst, that both he and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, are sought for interviews with Durham’s investigators. The interviews, should they occur, would signal that Durham is expanding his investigation.

Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham to oversee an inquiry into U.S. agencies’ Trump-related intelligence-gathering activities earlier this year. Barr said he was not satisfied with official explanations about the origins of the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

The FBI opened an investigation on July 31, 2016 into whether Trump associates were colluding with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. The special counsel’s investigation found no evidence of a conspiracy or that any Trump associates acted as agents of Russia.

But Brennan, a staunch critic of President Donald Trump and Barr, has fiercely defended the investigation of the Trump campaign. He is also questioning the legal basis for the Durham probe, which he called “bizarre.”

“I don’t know what the legal basis for this is,” he told NBC News.

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State Department Concludes Clinton Email Review, Says It Found Nearly 600 Security Violations

State Department investigators probing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state discovered nearly 600 security incidents that violated agency policy, according to a report the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained.

The investigation, conducted by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, found 38 individuals were culpable for 91 security violations. Another 497 violations were found, but no individuals were found culpable in those incidents.

The investigation concluded Sept. 6, and the report was issued Sept. 13.

The investigation sought to determine if the exchange of emails on Clinton’s server “represented failure to properly safeguard classified information” and whether any individuals at State were culpable for any of the failures.

Clinton exchanged more than 60,000 emails on a private email account hosted on a server that she kept at her residence in New York. She emailed frequently with longtime aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, and an outside adviser, Sidney Blumenthal.

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EU Ambassador To Testify He Was ‘Disappointed’ That Trump Outsourced Ukraine Issues To Giuliani

• Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, is testifying under subpoena Thursday as part of a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.
• Sondland plans to tell lawmakers that Trump directed him on May 23 to work with Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine-related issues.
• Sondland will testify that he was “disappointed” by the order. Giuliani is reportedly under investigation over his Ukraine ties. 

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland will tell Congress Thursday that President Donald Trump directed him to work with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on Ukraine-related issues and that he was “disappointed” by the command.

He will say that Trump told him, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker on May 23 that they should consult with Giuliani about corruption issues in the European nation, according to Sondland’s prepared remarks.

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Michael Flynn Lawyer Seeks Data From Joseph Mifsud Phones That Government ‘Recently’ Obtained

• A lawyer for Michael Flynn made a surprising request in a court filing Tuesday.
• Sidney Powell is asking prosecutors to provide Flynn’s legal team with data from two phones belonging to Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor who is linked to George Papadopoulos.
• Powell said the government “recently” obtained the phones.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s attorney made a surprising request in a court filing Tuesday for two phones that she says belonged to Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor whose contacts with former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos are at the heart of the Trump-Russia probe.

Sidney Powell, a Flynn lawyer, asked the judge presiding over Flynn’s case to order prosecutors “to produce evidence that has only recently come into its possession.”

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Giuliani Won’t Comply With ‘Illegitimate’ House Subpoenas, Says He Doesn’t Need Criminal Lawyer ‘At This Time’

A defiant Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday he will not comply with congressional subpoenas issued in the Trump impeachment inquiry, which he called “illegitimate, unconstitutional, and baseless.”

Giuliani posted a letter on Twitter from his attorney, Jon Sale, to the House Intelligence Committee rejecting a subpoena.

Sale said in the letter that Giuliani, who is President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is abiding by an Oct. 8 letter that White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent House Democrats saying that the executive branch will not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, which focuses on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

Giuliani told the Daily Caller last week he would not comply with a subpoena because his Ukraine-related work is protected by attorney-client privilege.

Since late in 2018, Giuliani has worked with two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to gather information about possible Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election. They have also pushed the unfounded theory that former Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukraine’s president to fire a prosecutor in 2016 investigating his son’s firm, Burisma Holdings. 

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The FISA Abuse Report Is Coming Out Soon. Here’s What To Know About It

• The Justice Department is expected to release its much-anticipated report on potential FISA abuse soon.
• A lot is riding on the report. Republicans have built up expectations that it will be highly critical of the FBI’s actions during the Trump-Russia probe.
• The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page. The special counsel’s investigation undercut several of Steele’s allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.

The Justice Department inspector general’s much-anticipated report of FISA abuse is expected to be made public soon, perhaps within the next couple of weeks.

A lot is riding on the report, which Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, submitted to the FBI and Justice Department for a declassification review on Sept 13.

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Schiff Says Congress May Not Need To Interview Whistleblower After All

Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday that the House Intelligence Committee might not need to interview the CIA analyst who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, a reversal for the Democrat, who has come under fire for failing to disclose the whistleblower’s contacts with his office.

Schiff acknowledged he initially supported the whistleblower testifying about the Aug. 12 complaint, which centered on a July 25 phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower who wasn’t on the call to tell us what took place during the call, we have the best evidence of that,” Schiff said on “Face the Nation.” “It may not be necessary to take steps that might reveal the whistleblower’s identity to do that, and we’re going to make sure we protect that whistleblower.”

The Democrat has slowly pulled back his preference for the whistleblower to testify after it was revealed Oct. 2 that the CIA analyst had contact with a Schiff aide prior to filing the complaint Aug. 12.

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Tom Cotton Unloads On Intelligence Community IG Over ‘Evasive’ And ‘Obstructive’ Testimony About Trump Whistleblower

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton accused Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson of being “evasive” and “obstructive” during a closed-door hearing on Sept. 26 in which he refused to shed light on the potential political bias of a Trump whistleblower.

“Your disappointing testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on September 26 was evasive to the point of being insolent and obstructive,” Cotton, a Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Community, wrote Wednesday to Atkinson.

Atkinson refused to discuss what he meant in an Aug. 26 letter that said the whistleblower had an “indicia of an arguable political bias” in favor of one of President Donald Trump’s rival political candidates, according to Cotton.

Cotton argued that information regarding possible bias is “urgently relevant” to determining whether the complaint is part of a “well-coordinated partisan attack” aimed at impeaching Trump.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer for the whistleblower, said on Twitter after Cotton released his letter that the questions about the whistleblower’s alleged bias are intended to “detract from the substance of the complaint.”

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Intelligence Analyst Allegedly Leaked Classified Info To Journalist With Whom He Was Romantically Involved

An analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency has been charged with leaking top secret information about a foreign country’s weapons systems to two journalists, including one he was romantically involved with, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday.

Henry Kyle Frese, 30, was charged with two counts of the willful transmission of national defense information.

Frese accessed Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) computer systems in April 2018 to obtain information unrelated to his job about an unidentified country’s weapons capabilities, and provided it to the reporters, according to the indictment.

One of the reporters published eight articles based on leaks that Frese provided from five classified DIA reports, prosecutors alleged, according to the Department of Justice.

“Frese was caught red-handed disclosing sensitive national security information for personal gain,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement.

The journalists are not identified in the indictment, but prosecutors said Frese shared an address with one of them for more than a year.

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Report: John Durham Has Expanded Investigation Of CIA, FBI Activities

The U.S. attorney probing FBI and CIA counterintelligence activities related to the Trump campaign has expanded the scope of the inquiry, according to Fox News.

John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, is using additional agents and resources as part of the inquiry, which is also looking at the activities of foreign intelligence agencies.

Senior administration officials told Fox News’s Bret Baier that Durham has expanded the investigation because of information he has obtained in the probe.

However, based on what he has been finding, Durham has expanded his investigation adding agents and resources, the senior administration officials said. The timeline has grown from the beginning of the probe through the election and now has included a post-election timeline through the spring of 2017, up to when Robert Mueller was named special counsel.

Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham to oversee the inquiry shortly after the end of the special counsel’s investigation, which said there was no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government.

Barr has said he has questions about the timeline of events leading up to the FBI’s opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

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Chuck Todd Blows Up On GOP Senator For Asking About John Brennan

• Chuck Todd and Sen. Ron Johnson had a heated exchange on “Meet the Press” Sunday when the Wisconsin Republican brought up questions about possible CIA leaks during the Trump-Russia probe.
• “Sen. Johnson, please!” an exasperated Todd bellowed at one point.
• Todd pressed Johnson over his conversations with Trump over Ukraine. Johnson suggested that Todd ask former CIA Director John Brenann about a Peter Strzok text that suggested the CIA was leaking for political reasons. 

“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd blew up on Sen. Ron Johnson Sunday after the Republican brought up possible CIA leaks during the Trump-Russia investigation.

“Sen. Johnson, please,” Todd said at one point during the contentious interview. “Can we please answer the question that I asked you instead of trying to make [President] Donald Trump feel better here that you’re not criticizing him?”

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Whistleblower Did Not Disclose Contact With Schiff’s Office, Intel Inspector General Told Congress

• Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson testified Friday that the Trump whistleblower did not disclose contacts with Adam Schiff’s office when filing his complaint on Aug. 12.
• ICIG forms require whistleblowers to disclose contacts with other government officials related to their complaints.
• Rep. Adam Schiff’s office confirmed this week that the whistleblower reached out to one of the Democrat’s aides and that Schiff had a general idea of what was alleged in the complaint.

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson told the House Intelligence Committee on Friday that a CIA whistleblower did not disclose contact with Chairman Adam Schiff’s office before filing a complaint against President Donald Trump, a source familiar with the watchdog’s testimony told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge first reported that Atkinson said that the whistleblower did not disclose having contact with Schiff’s office, and so he did not investigate the matter.

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GOP Senators Ask Intelligence Community’s IG About Classified Leaks Of Whistleblower Complaint

Two Republican senators are asking the intelligence community’s inspector general whether he is investigating leaks of classified details of the whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, as well as leaks for news stories published about the Trump-Russia investigation.

“As you are aware, there have been a number of leaks of highly sensitive information in the past two years, arguably perpetrated to advance political or personal interests to the apparent detriment to the national security and the integrity of federal administrative, law enforcement, and counterintelligence investigations,” Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin wrote Wednesday to Michael K. Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG).

They noted that classified information about a CIA whistleblower’s complaint over a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president leaked to the media in the weeks before the complaint was released.

The whistleblower filed the complaint on Aug. 12, but it was not made public until Sept. 26.

“However, between those dates, news reports used anonymous sources to report on information relating to the complaint and phone call that were classified at the time,” Grassley and Johnson said.

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Schiff Acted Like He Didn’t Know What Was In Whistleblower Complaint; A NYT Report Suggests He Did

• The New York Times reports that Rep. Adam Schiff was given some details of a whistleblower’s allegations against President Donald Trump before a complaint was filed.
• That revelation raises new questions for Schiff, who strongly implied in interviews over the past several weeks that he did not know the substance of the complaint.
• Schiff also said that he might not have known about the complaint if not for a letter from the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG). But according to The Times, Schiff’s staff referred the whistleblower to the IC IG in the first place.

In the days leading up to last week’s release of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff implied that he was unaware of the substance of the allegations in the document, which centered on Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president.

But a report from The New York Times on Wednesday raises news questions about Schiff’s claims.

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DOJ Will Start Releasing Hundreds Of Pages Of Mueller Probe Documents Each Month

The Justice Department will start releasing 500 pages of notes from witness interviews in the special counsel’s probe each month, beginning on Nov. 1.

A Justice Department lawyer said at a hearing that the agency has 800 witness interview transcripts, known as FD-302s, totaling more than 44,000 pages, according to CNN.

CNN and BuzzFeed sued DOJ to begin releasing 302s collected during the special counsel’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government influence the 2016 election, as well as whether President Donald Trump attempted to obstruct the probe.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel, said in a report that investigators failed to establish that a conspiracy occurred. He declined to charge or to exonerate Trump on the question of obstruction of justice.

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Report: AG Barr Is Ramping Up His Probe Of CIA, FBI Activities In 2016

Attorney General William Barr has met with foreign intelligence officials, including during a trip to Italy earlier in September, regarding an investigation into surveillance activities against the Trump campaign, The Washington Post reported.

Barr was joined in the meeting by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, WaPo reported, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

“As the Department of Justice has previously announced, a team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the origins of the U.S. counterintelligence probe of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign,” department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told Politico in a statement. “Mr. Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials.”

Barr tapped Durham earlier in 2019 to lead a broad investigation into FBI and CIA activities in the run-up to an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.

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