The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”) released two transcripts Monday morning from the 2019 closed-door interviews of the then-Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson. The just-released transcripts reveal new details behind the scheming that led to the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
That first impeachment trial focused on President Trump’s July 25, 2019 telephone conversation with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. After the call, a supposed-whistleblower — more on that shortly — filed a complaint with the inspector general’s office on August 12, 2019, charging that Trump sought Zelensky’s assistance in investigating the Bidens to interfere in the 2020 election.
The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, however, concluded the Intelligence Community’s inspector general lacked jurisdiction to investigate the complaint because the call between the respective presidents did not involve the intelligence community. IG Atkinson responded by sending HPSCI a letter on September 9, 2019, alerting the House Committee to the “whistleblower” complaint and the fact that the Acting Director of National Intelligence had not forwarded the complaint to Congress, as purportedly required by statute.
Atkinson’s letter launched a new firestorm, with the embers from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation only extinguished some six months prior. HPSCI moved quickly to question Atkinson, with the then-IG sitting for a closed-door interview on September 19, 2019. The transcript from that interview consisted mainly of Atkinson explaining the timing of the complaint and his interactions with the Director of National Intelligence, and the basis for the Office of Legal Counsel’s conclusion that the IG’s office lacked jurisdiction over the “whistleblower’s” complaint. Based on that finding, Atkinson explained, he could not share the details of the complaint with HPSCI.
While Atkinson refrained from discussing the “whistleblower’s” complaint, leaks to the media revealed the substance of the charge concerned Trump’s supposed corrupt call with the Ukrainian president. Not long after, then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced she was launching impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
President Trump countered by declassifying the transcript memorializing the details of his July call with Zelensky, which showed that Trump had made no mention of the 2020 election; nor did he otherwise seek to improperly influence the Ukrainian president. Nonetheless, the House proceeded with the impeachment, with Alexander Vindman serving as a star witness.
Vindman had listened to Trump’s call with Zelensky in real time from the situation room and testified about his impressions of the call. But Vindman was not the “whistleblower.” According to Real Clear Investigations, the CIA’s Eric Ciaramella was the “whistleblower.” And here’s where the just-released transcripts make things interesting.
After the House launched the impeachment inquiry and the “whistleblower’s” complaint was made public, IG Atkinson testified in a second closed-door interview. During that October 4, 2019 testimony, Atkinson explained that the “whistleblower” had provided him with a “Memorandum of Conversation” dated July 26, 2019. That memorandum purported to summarize a conversation the whistleblower had with an unnamed individual Atkinson identified as “Witness One.”
Atkinson then proceeded to explain that “Witness One,” had “listened to the telephone call in real-time,” which matches up precisely with Vindman. Yet, Atkinson testified that in assessing whether the “whistleblower” complaint was credible, they never spoke with Witness One. Instead, Atkinson testified that they interviewed two of the “whistleblower’s” supervisors to assess their perspective of the “whistleblower.” The IG office also assessed whether the whistleblower held any bias.
The IG’s office was kicking the wrong car’s tires: The so-called whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the call and was merely repeating Witness One’s statements. Or, as The Federalist’s editor-in-chief put it, “Vindman, Not Whistleblower, Was Driving Force Behind Impeachment.” But Atkinson didn’t speak with Vindman or assess his credibility or bias before finding the “whistleblower’s” complaint was credible.
Instead, Atkinson’s team spoke with two of the whistleblower’s supervisors and an individual branded “Witness Two,” who reviewed the transcript of the July 2019 telephone call after the fact. Atkinson didn’t bother, however, to actually review the transcript himself before finding the complaint that Trump pressured “Ukrainian authorities to investigate his political rivals” to interfere in the 2020 election was credible. And even when confronted with the declassified transcript of the call — a transcript that confirmed Trump made no reference to politics, the election, or any supposed quid-pro-quo — Atkinson maintained that Witness One and Witness Two’s claims of misconduct were credible.
While he continued to claim the whistleblower and the other witnesses were credible, Atkinson acknowledged during his October 2019 HPSCI testimony that the whistleblower was less than forthright when it came to conversations he had had with the Democrats leading the House Intelligence Committee. Atkinson made this admission during a line of questioning from then Representative, now-CIA Director, John Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe asked Atkinson whether the whistleblower had contact with HPSCI’s (Democrat) majority members or their staff. Atkinson replied that he did not know the answer to that question. Ratcliffe continued: “Your investigative team didn’t ask the number of times the complainant met with members of HPSCI before filing a complaint?”
Atkinson responded: “On the urgent disclosure form, there’s a question that the complainant is asked about who they have reported the violation to, and one of the boxes is the congressional intelligence committees. The complainant did not check that box.” The former IG added that “[o]ur investigators also asked the complainant who knew about the complainant’s disclosure,” but that “[t]he complainant did not identify the congressional intelligence committees.”
Then-HPSCI Chair Adam Schiff would later be forced to admit that the so-called whistleblower had spoken with committee staff and shared the outlines of the supposed charges against Trump. Once that news broke, Schiff retreated from his promise that Americans would hear from the whistleblower during the impeachment trial, although since Vindman testified, one could say they did.
In addition to all the backdoor scheming between the “whistleblower,” Vindman, Democrats on HPSCI, and, through at best, his willful ignorance, Atkinson, the transcripts released Monday also highlight the politicization of the FBI that continued under Trump 1.0 after Director James Comey’s firing.
According to Atkinson, on September 4, 2019, he referred President Trump to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division for investigation of potential violations of campaign finance and other criminal conspiracy laws. But on September 25, 2019, the Department of Justice announced that it had reviewed the official record of the call and “based on the facts and applicable law, that there was no campaign finance violation and that no further action was warranted. All relevant components of the Department agreed with this legal conclusion, and the Department has concluded the matter.”
Yet, on October 2, 2019 — after the DOJ announced it had “concluded the matter” — the FBI contacted Atkinson asking, “for access to our preliminary review files.” Atkinson further testified that even though he had referred Trump to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division for investigation, it was not the Counterintelligence Division that had contacted him to obtain the files. Atkinson, however, refused to reveal which FBI division sought to relaunch an investigation into the president after the DOJ had closed down the probe.
Given what is starting to come out about the Arctic Frost investigation, the FBI’s Public Corruption Division seems a good guess and something worth exploring further.
And while Americans may be exhausted by the process, the public needs to recognize the reality that our country faced. As former Congressman Devin Nunes, who served on HPSCI at the time of the first impeachment, said, “intelligence bureaucrats attempted a coup against the elected President of the United States and hid what they did for years by burying the evidence with inappropriate classification designations.”
“It is gratifying to see the truth is finally getting out,” Nunes added, noting that besides Monday’s declassification, last year saw the declassification of HPSCI’s report on the deceptive Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia’s purported efforts to influence the 2016 election. “I hope it all leads to accountability for the conspirators,” the former HPSCI Chair said.
If it doesn’t, may it at least wake Americans up to how the deep state and a complicit media sought to thwart their electoral will.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press.
She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
