Puppet Masters

Trump-Ukraine CIA whistleblower sought by FBI for questioning

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 12:24 UTC

The FBI has reached out to an attorney for the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower reported to be CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, who filed a complaint over President Trump's July 25 phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodomyr Zelensky, according to Yahoo! News. The move came after a vigorous internal debate at the agency over how to proceed with an investigation of allegations contained in the complaint, according to sources familiar with the matter.

According to the report, an FBI agent from the Washington field office reached out to whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid (The 'Coup has started' guy who loves going to Disneyland alone), who declined comment for the article. From Yahoo! News:

The request from the FBI comes at a sensitive moment when Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are making repeated efforts to "out" the whistleblower in order to suggest he may have had political motivations hostile to the president when he filed his Aug. 12 complaint with the intelligence community's inspector general.

It also comes after multiple threats have been made against the whistleblower and his lawyers — some of which have been separately passed along by the lawyers to other officials at the FBI. But the agent who sought to question the whistleblower made no reference to the threats as the purpose of the interview, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Yahoo suggests that an FBI interview will "introduce a new wild card into the debate over whether to impeach the president over his Ukraine dealings."

Comment: Daily Caller, 20/11/2019; Nunes to subpoena whistleblower, Hunter Biden

Republican California Rep. Devin Nunes on Wednesday wrote a letter to House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff asking Hunter Biden and the whistleblower to be subpoenaed to appear before the committee. Nunes and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said in the letter:
"The American people understand how you have affirmatively prevented Republicans from examining serious issues directly relevant to the issues. Therefore, to provide some basic level of fairness and objectivity to your 'impeachment inquiry,' we intend to subpoena the anonymous whistleblower and Hunter Biden for sworn testimony in closed-door depositions."
Nunes Plans To Subpoena Whistleblower, Hunter Biden on Scribd

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Thursday said he might force a vote to bring in 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden's son in as a witness to the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the Senate cannot dismiss the articles of impeachment against Trump, meaning there will be a trial. However, most Republican senators refused to rule out voting to remove Trump from office in an impeachment trial over the Ukraine scandal when contacted by the Daily Caller at the end of October.

The Caller contacted all 53 Republican Senate offices to ask if senators would rule out voting to remove Trump from office, and received a variety of responses — seven senators explicitly rejected impeachment in their statement.

However, Senate Republicans do not appear to be concerned about House Democrats' ongoing efforts to impeach Trump, with many saying even if the House were to move forward with impeachment, that there is no way the Senate would vote to impeach the president.

The Daily Caller spoke with over ten GOP senators in mid-October, who all shared their views about House Democrats' efforts to impeach the President. Not one senator was concerned about the impeachment process, saying they are most concerned about the Democrats' ongoing attempts to impeach Trump based on no hard evidence.

House Democrats will continue to hold open impeachment hearings throughout the next weeks.