Eric Ciaramella Linked to Soros Foundation - Informed of Soros' Movements, Asked To Anticipate 'Particular Problems'
I know I’m not supposed to say the name of suspected whistleblower Eric Ciaramella’s name or else I’m putting him and his family in grave personal danger, so let’s get this one right out of the way: Eric Ciaramella, Eric Ciaramella, Eric Ciaramella, Eric Ciaramella.
Is he in any more danger? Have I debased political debate in the United States any further? Have I engaged in fake news? No, no and no? All right, so I feel safe continuing here.
It’d be impossible to even bullet-point all of the curious links Ciaramella and the whistleblower — assuming they are one and the same — have to Democrats and powerful liberals.
Ciaramella, a CIA analyst who was stationed in the White House at one point, also worked closely with then-Vice President Joe Biden on issues related to Ukraine.
He met with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff before he filed his whistleblower complaint.
He was purportedly the author of an email that showed what Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Horowitz might have called an “indicia” of an inarguable conspiratorial bias, since it all but accused President Donald Trump of coordinating former FBI Director James Comey’s firing with the Russians.
And now, in case you didn’t have enough to make you suspicious, the dramatis personæ in the Ciaramella saga includes none other than liberal billionaire George Soros.
In addition to his role as a Santa Claus for liberal campaigns, Soros also funds and/or runs many prominent organizations linked to his political goals. The most prominent of these is the Open Society Foundations, which serves as an umbrella group for many of Soros’ other efforts.
It also served as a source of information and policy tip-offs for none other than Eric Ciaramella.
According to a report from investigative reporter Aaron Klein published by Breitbart on Sunday, Ciaramella received emails on Ukraine — his area of expertise — from one of OSF’s top directors.
“The emails informed Ciaramella and a handful of other Obama administration foreign policy officials about Soros’s whereabouts, the contents of Soros’s private meetings about Ukraine and a future meeting the billionaire activist was holding with the prime minister of Ukraine,” Klein reported.
“A primary recipient of the Open Society emails along with Ciaramella was then-Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who played a central role in the anti-Trump dossier affair. Nuland, with whom Ciaramella worked closely, received updates on Ukraine issues from dossier author Christopher Steele in addition to her direct role in facilitating the dossier within the Obama administration.”
Take one from June 9, 2019 from senior policy analyst for Eurasia at the OSF, Jeff Goldstein. It described a meeting between Soros and Johannes Hahn, whom Klein identified as a member of the European Union’s Commission for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations.
“I wanted to let you know that Mr. Soros met with Johannes Hahn in Brussels earlier today. One of the issues he raised was concern over the decision to delay the visa liberalization for Georgia and the implications for Ukraine,” the message read.
Ciaramella and Nuland had the email addressed to them, but other State Department officials were copied on the document.
Soros, the email said, “is also meeting [Georgian] President [Giorgi] Margvelashvili today and speaking with [then-Ukranian Prime Minister Volodymyr] Groyman.” (It’s actually Groysman, but what’s a little misspelling if our current president doesn’t make it?)
Soros told Hahn “that Ukrainian civil society is concerned that without reciprocity from the EU for steps Ukraine has taken to put in place sensitive anti-corruption and anti-discrimination legislation and institutions it will not be possible to continue to use the leverage of EU instruments and policies to maintain pressure for reforms in the future” and “urged Hahn to advocate with member states to move ahead with visa liberalization for Ukraine.”
The email concluded, according to Klein, with the sentence: “I’m sure you’ve been working this issue hard; if you have any thoughts on how this is likely to play out or where particular problems lie I’d appreciate if you could let us know.”
“Goldstein’s email text sent to Nuland and Ciaramella was not addressed to any one individual,” Klein reported.
“Nuland replied that she would be happy to discuss the issues by phone. Goldstein set up a phone call and wrote that Soros specifically asked that an employee from the billionaire’s ‘personal office’ join the call with Nuland.”
The emails were obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act request unrelated to the Ukraine investigation — pretty much by accident, in other words.
The Soros links continue in the whistleblower report, which Breitbart originally reported mirrored concerns in a July 22 piece from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a foundation funded in large part by Soros and tech giant Google.
In the report, the whistleblower claimed that that “multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.”
This, the whistleblower implied, was to follow up on potential investigations into the Ukraine energy company Burisma Holdings and potential corruption involving the Bidens. (As most of the world knows by now, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a board member of Burisma, receiving a salary of $50,000 a month.)
Irrespective of what you think about how true this was or whether it was called for, there was something curious about the claim. While it was phrased as if this were information passed along to the whistleblower — i.e., “multiple U.S. officials told me” — a footnote about the allegations refers to the OCCRP report.
“In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir,” the footnote states.
Furthermore, three more allegations in the whistleblower complaint are footnoted with the OCCRP report as a reference. Significant portions of the whistleblower report, in other words, were (at best) buttressed by or (at worst) merely echoing a piece from a Soros-funded organization that was — no matter how you feel about the information contained therein — a hit piece slanted against the Trump administration’s efforts in Ukraine.
(The report was also done in concert with BuzzFeed, the journalistic outfit responsible for publishing the mostly discredited Steele dossier, just in case this didn’t look bad enough)
This link had previously been reported by former federal prosecutor Joe di Genova during an appearance on Fox News:
None of this, taken in isolation, is damning. None of these things alone would invalidate the whistleblower report. However, taken in concert — along with the whistleblower’s demand that he offer testimony only in writing — the facts present a picture of someone with more than a mere “indicia” of bias.
If the whistleblower is Eric Ciaramella (it’s also worth noting that nowhere in the torrent of condemnation that lies in wait for anyone who mentions his name has there ever been a specific denial that Ciaramella was the whistleblower), this is important stuff.
It’s indicative of a man who had an agenda. It’s indicative of a man who is very much — I know it’s an overused phrase, but none other will suffice — of The Swamp.
Did his agenda or his swampiness substantively affect the whistleblower complaint or what we know about President Trump’s decisions in re: military funding for Ukraine? We don’t know — and that’s why testimony that goes beyond written answers is necessary. It can (and probably should) be behind closed doors. We didn’t even need to know the whistleblower’s name, although it appears we certainly do now.
What we need to know why they seem to be connected to so many liberal organizations and tentacles of Democrat officialdom — and what kind of influence that had on his decision-making in this matter.
When this is a complaint that’s allegedly coming from a man being appraised of George Soros’ movements, there are questions that need to be answered, and not just on paper.
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