In 2019, then-President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for allegedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate corruption supposedly linked to the Biden family – specifically Hunter Biden. The “scandal” began with a whistleblower complaint. Credit goes to investigative journalist John Solomon and Just the News for a years-long fight to get the impeachment memos declassified. Those documents reveal that the whistleblower “relied on hearsay, submitted false claims, and had documented political bias,” as FBI spokesman Ben Williamson phrased it. This first Trump impeachment has now morphed into a scandal of its own, possibly giving Trump – now president again – the chance to have it expunged from the record.
What could be called the Trump era, 2016 to 2028 (because even during the four years of Joe Biden’s presidency, Donald Trump was the dominating political figure) may come to be known for, among other things, the validation of so many “conspiracy theories.” One of those theories was that the Trump impeachment over the infamous Ukraine phone call between the US and Ukrainian presidents was a planned political persecution.
Trump Impeachment Whistleblower Discredited
As things have turned out, that theory now appears to have been not just a theory. Though the ‘whistleblower” had direct ties to Joe Biden, was a registered Democrat with a known history of anti-Trump bias and relied on third-hand hearsay and false claims, none of this was revealed to Congress or to the American people.
Potentially exculpatory evidence, then, was kept from the president’s defense team. Had it been known how compromised the so-called whistleblower really was – and how little of what he or she told the intelligence community came from first-hand knowledge of the events – the first Trump impeachment would have been met with a great deal of skepticism, assuming it had succeeded at all.
"This is the same playbook used during the Russia collusion hoax, which Director Patel exposed,” Williamson said in a post to the X social media platform. “The FBI has previously been reviewing these revelations closely and will continue to do so."
FBI Director Kash Patel was also implicated – by name – by the Ukraine whistleblower, who requested at the time that his or her own political bias be kept off the record.
At the very least, this means an unknown number of Intelligence Community officials knew the case against Trump was, at best, flimsy and, at worst, a deliberately fabricated hoax. How much the Democrats’ impeachment managers knew is not yet clear.
That is precisely why Williamson of the FBI and John Solomon have linked the two “scandals.” In fact, Solomon went as far as describing the Trump impeachment over the Ukraine affair as a continuation of the Russia collusion hoax, now known to have been dreamed up in 2016 by Hillary Clinton’s campaign team.
Correcting the Record
Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has suggested that President Trump could, in theory, now go to US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who presided over the impeachment, or to Congress, and ask for the Ukraine impeachment to be expunged from the record.
Dershowitz reasons that an impeachment is a “quasi-judicial procedure.” In a criminal case, the defense must have access to whatever exculpatory evidence has been gathered. He also argues that the president’s Sixth Amendment right to be able to confront witnesses was violated. The professor, though himself a Democrat back in 2019, defended Trump.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General at the time was aware of the whistleblower’s lack of credibility. As Just the News reported, the IG’s investigators “documented several concerns about the Trump accuser's political motives, noting he admitted he was a ‘registered Democrat’ who had worked closely with Joe Biden on Ukraine issues and who disliked some of the conservative figures in the president's orbit.”
Is Accountability Coming?
The investigators also had the whistleblower on record as admitting, “I do not have direct knowledge of private comments or communications by the President.” And yet, the IG, Michael Atkinson, forwarded the complaint to Congress, sparking the Trump impeachment. In a written press release, current Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard said, in part:
“Despite a lack of any firsthand evidence, IC IG Atkinson proceeded to take actions to weaponize the Whistleblower process and exceed his statutory jurisdiction by ignoring Department of Justice guidance and relying on only second-hand testimony to ensure the whistleblower complaint was released to Congress, referred to the FBI, and leaked to the propaganda media.”
Supporters of President Trump have long waited, with increasing impatience, to see deep state actors who weaponized federal government agencies for political purposes held accountable. At least on the surface, little of that seems to be moving forward. Perhaps these new revelations about the Trump impeachment of 2019 will stir some action.
As the DNI press release says, “Deep state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that was used by Congress to usurp the will of the American people and impeach the duly-elected President of the United States,” and accountability “will help prevent future abuse of power.”
