Adam Schiff built a presidential impeachment on a complaint he claimed he knew nothing about.
The evidence he hid is what Democrats used to impeach a president.
What those memos show about the man who started the impeachment is something Schiff's team worked for six years to keep you from reading.
The Ukraine Whistleblower Had No Firsthand Knowledge of Anything
The whistleblower who ignited the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump told intelligence community investigators in his very first interview: "I do not have direct knowledge of private comments or communications by the President."
That line never made it into the nine-page complaint Adam Schiff released to launch impeachment proceedings.
Neither did anything else the Intelligence Community Inspector General quietly documented about Trump's accuser – a registered Democrat who had worked closely with Joe Biden on Ukraine policy, who disliked several conservative figures surrounding Trump, and whom the ICIG flagged as carrying a "potential for bias."
DNI Tulsi Gabbard just declassified those memos.
Investigators for the Intelligence Community Inspector General – the independent watchdog for America's spy agencies – built a file on the anonymous CIA analyst whose complaint gave Democrats the pretext they needed.
Trump's defense lawyers never saw it. Neither did the Senate jurors who voted on removal – and the American people, who watched Democrats impeach a president on the strength of it, were kept in the dark for six years.
Schiff Lied to MSNBC. The Memos Prove It.
On September 17, 2019, Adam Schiff looked into a camera on MSNBC and said this: "We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower."
The newly declassified memos contradict him directly.
The alleged whistleblower – identified in media reports as CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, now the Ukraine Initiative Director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – had already approached Schiff's staff before filing his complaint with the Inspector General.
On his federal disclosure form dated August 13, 2019, he checked boxes indicating he had spoken with the CIA's General Counsel, the CIA's Election Security Mission Manager, the National Intelligence Officer for Russia, and the Chair and Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council.
He did not check "Congress or congressional committee(s)."
On October 8, 2019 – after press reports surfaced – ICIG investigators confronted the accuser directly.
He admitted he had spoken with Schiff's staff and had not disclosed it.
And apologized for it.
"Complainant advised he/she was sorry for any problems caused for Mr. Atkinson due to the way he/she answered that question," the ICIG memo reads, "as it was certainly not his/her intent."
That apology was never shown to Trump's defense team.
Alan Dershowitz – the Harvard law professor emeritus who served as one of Trump's impeachment defense lawyers – said what was done here is indefensible.
"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," Dershowitz said.
The CIA Analyst Who Worked for Biden and Filed the Complaint Against Trump
The man who filed the complaint was a registered Democrat who had traveled to Ukraine with Joe Biden and sat in on conversations about Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko – the very corruption issues at the center of Trump's inquiry.
He was a listed guest at a Biden-hosted luncheon in October 2016 for the Italian Prime Minister – an event that also included CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey.
He called current FBI Director Kash Patel someone he disliked, called current Deputy CIA Director Michael Ellis – then a top Trump NSC staffer – "slippery and untrustworthy," and formally asked that Devin Nunes be blocked from viewing the disclosure, even though Nunes was a Gang of Eight member legally entitled to see it.
The witness who came forward to support the complaint, dubbed "Witness 2" in the ICIG documents, co-authored the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election interference – the same assessment the CIA now admits was built on faulty intelligence and flawed tradecraft.
He had also worked directly with Peter Strzok, who was fired for his role leading the Russia collusion probe. The accuser's own support network ran straight through the people who built Russiagate.
How the Impeachment Bias Evidence Stayed Classified for Six Years
Devin Nunes – who served on the House Intelligence Committee during impeachment and now chairs the President's Intelligence Advisory Board – was direct: this was never a whistleblower acting on conscience.
"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.
Mark Meadows – then a Republican impeachment manager, later Trump's chief of staff – said GOP lawmakers had real-time concerns about the accuser's credibility but couldn't get traction against Schiff's wall of procedural obstruction.
"Democrats leaked everything from the secure deposition room," Meadows said, "except the fact that they were coordinating with a 'so called' whistleblower who had no first-hand knowledge of the subject."
The ICIG watchdog who oversaw the original review was Michael Atkinson – the same official who kept these memos classified while Democrats used the complaint to drive impeachment forward.
Atkinson himself acknowledged in writing that the accuser showed "indicia of arguable political bias." He just decided that didn't matter enough to stop the process he was helping along.
Trump was acquitted by the Senate in 2020.
Six years later, Americans can finally read what his own defense team was never allowed to see.
Sources:
- John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy, "Impeachment Bombshell: Secret memos expose Ukraine accuser's bias, hearsay, and false claim," Just the News, April 12, 2026.
- Paul Sperry, "Impeachment 'Whistleblower' Was in the Loop of Biden-Ukraine Affairs That Trump Wanted Probed," RealClearInvestigations, April 17, 2024.
- Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian, Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, 2022.
- "Adam Schiff's False Claim That 'We Have Not Spoken Directly With the Whistleblower,'" PolitiFact, October 4, 2019.
- "Book Reveals Secret Meeting Between Adam Schiff's Aides and Ukraine Whistleblower Attorney," Washington Examiner, November 3, 2023.
- Paul Sperry, "Whistleblower Was Overheard in '17 Discussing With Ally How to Remove Trump," RealClearInvestigations, January 22, 2020.
