Newly declassified memos released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have blown open one of the most consequential cover-ups of the Trump era: the U.S. intelligence watchdog developed serious derogatory evidence against the CIA analyst who triggered the 2019 Ukraine impeachment — including that he submitted false information in his whistleblower complaint, relied entirely on hearsay, coordinated with Adam Schiff's staff before filing his complaint, and harbored documented political bias — and every bit of that evidence was kept hidden from the American public and from Trump's defense lawyers during the impeachment trial.
The documents, declassified at the request of Just the News, reveal a starkly different picture of the anonymous accuser whose carefully lawyered letter accusing President Trump of pressuring Ukraine for political gain was seized upon by House Democrats to launch the impeachment proceedings that consumed the final months of 2019.
"The evidence about the bias and credibility of the whistleblower who started the scandal should have been front and center in the 2019 impeachment, but it was hidden by bureaucrats and that was a disservice to justice and to the American people," said Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, one of Trump's defense lawyers during the Senate trial.
No Firsthand Knowledge — Admitted on His Own Form
Perhaps the most stunning revelation in the newly declassified memos is one that should have been the first thing anyone evaluating the whistleblower's credibility knew: the accuser himself admitted, on his own initial intake form, that he had no firsthand knowledge of the conduct he was alleging.
"I do not have direct knowledge of private comments or communications by the President," the alleged whistleblower wrote in his August 2019 disclosure form.
That admission — devastating to the entire premise of the complaint — was never included in the nine-page letter that then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff released in late summer 2019, the document that launched the impeachment frenzy. Democrats presented the whistleblower's allegations as credible and urgent. They did not tell the public, the House, or the Senate that the man making those allegations had admitted he was working entirely from second- and third-hand accounts.
"Democrats leaked everything from the secure deposition room except the fact that they were coordinating with a 'so called' whistleblower who had no first-hand knowledge of the subject," said Mark Meadows, who served as a House impeachment manager defending Trump before becoming his White House chief of staff.
Documented Bias — Admitted by the Whistleblower Himself
The Intelligence Community Inspector General's memos document a formal inquiry into the alleged whistleblower's "potential for bias" — and the results of that inquiry were alarming. The accuser himself acknowledged three specific areas where bias could be alleged, even while insisting his complaint was "free from political influence."
First, he admitted he had "worked closely with Vice President Biden as an expert on Ukraine" and had "traveled with Biden to Ukraine." He was also a listed guest at a Biden-hosted White House luncheon in October 2016 honoring the Italian prime minister. Second, he described his time in the Trump White House as "very stressful" and said he had become "the target of right-wing bloggers and conspiracy theorists." Third — and most plainly — he admitted he was "a registered Democrat."
The ICIG noted "some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate." That finding was buried. Trump's defense lawyers never saw it.
The memos also show the alleged whistleblower disliked several prominent conservatives in Trump's orbit, including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and current FBI Director Kash Patel. He went so far as to make a formal "request for Nunes not to view the disclosure" — even though Nunes was a member of the congressional "Gang of Eight" with full legal entitlement to see such intelligence. He also described then-NSC staffer Michael Ellis — now the deputy CIA director — as "slippery and untrustworthy."
The Schiff Coordination — And the False Form
The memos' most explosive revelation involves the alleged whistleblower's coordination with Schiff's staff before filing his complaint — and his failure to disclose it.
The whistleblower's disclosure form included a section asking whether he had previously contacted Congress about his allegations. He checked boxes indicating he had spoken with several intelligence community officials — but he did not check the box for "Congress or congressional committee(s)," despite having spoken with Schiff's staff before submitting his complaint.
When the omission was exposed in media reports, the whistleblower met with ICIG investigators on October 8, 2019, acknowledged the oversight, and apologized. That apology — a direct admission that his form was inaccurate — was never made public. Schiff, meanwhile, told MSNBC in September 2019 that "we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower." A Schiff spokesperson later attempted to argue he was referring only to Schiff personally, not his staff — a distinction that satisfied virtually no one outside the mainstream media.
"Witness 2" — Strzok-Connected and Co-Author of the Flawed 2016 ICA
The memos also shed new light on "Witness 2," an intelligence official who supported the whistleblower during the ICIG's review. The documents reveal that Witness 2 had worked with disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok — the lead investigator on the Crossfire Hurricane Russia probe who was fired for his virulent anti-Trump text messages — and was a co-author of the controversial 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election interference.
That ICA, produced at President Obama's direction and overseen by Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, has since been sharply criticized for including Christopher Steele's debunked Clinton-campaign-funded dossier as supporting material for its conclusion that Putin sought to help Trump win. A declassified House Intelligence Committee report revealed that the ICA leaned on the Steele dossier to underpin that central finding while ignoring evidence that Russia may have actually favored or expected a Clinton victory.
Witness 2 knew all of this. He supported the whistleblower anyway — while acknowledging he would not have made the same allegations himself.
The Impeachment Built on Sand
Devin Nunes, who served on the House Intelligence Committee during the impeachment and now chairs the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, called the proceedings "a shocking and shameful chapter in our history" and said the new memos "further demonstrate the highly orchestrated way the fake whistleblower manufactured and deployed his complaint."
"It was clearly a staged attack by anti-Trump malcontents in the intelligence bureaucracy who believed that they, not the American people, should determine who is the U.S. president," Nunes said. "The Democrats and the media promoted this hoax as a desperate Plan B after their original pretext for impeaching Trump — Russian collusion — finally collapsed following Special Counsel Mueller's inept testimony to Congress."
Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House in December 2019 and acquitted by the Senate in early 2020. His defense lawyers were never permitted to introduce the ICIG's evidence of bias and credibility concerns at the Senate trial — because it had been kept classified by then-ICIG Michael Atkinson, whose own closed-door congressional testimony transcript is now expected to be released by the House Intelligence Committee imminently.
The alleged whistleblower's name was redacted from the newly declassified memos but has been identified in some media reports as retired CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, who now works at a Washington think tank and appears regularly on the Lawfare podcast — the outlet whose editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes was described by Politico as "the Bard of the Deep State" and is a self-described friend of fired FBI Director James Comey. Ciaramella did not respond to a request for comment.
What the memos make undeniable is that an impeachment of a sitting United States president was built on the testimony of a politically biased, Schiff-coordinated, hearsay-dependent accuser who admitted he had no firsthand knowledge of the conduct he was alleging — and that the evidence demonstrating all of this was deliberately kept from the public and from the president's defense for six years.
The House Intelligence Committee is expected to release the transcript of ICIG Michael Atkinson's closed-door congressional testimony as early as this week. The investigation continues.
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04.14.2026