Remember that “anonymous whistleblower” who kicked off the first Trump impeachment back in 2019? The one whose identity was the worst-kept secret in Washington? Well, CNN just ran a fresh story about DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s criminal referral related to the whole impeachment fiasco — and they still won’t say his name. Eric Ciaramella. There. We said it. Somebody had to.
Apparently at CNN, journalistic integrity means you protect a Democrat operative’s identity like he’s in the mob and you’re running the federal marshals service. Five years, folks. Five years of pretending we don’t all know exactly who this guy is.
Here’s what happened. Gabbard’s office sent a criminal referral based on newly declassified documents showing that Ciaramella — Schiff’s star “whistleblower” — had been flagged for “potential bias,” lied to investigators about his prior contact with House Intelligence Committee staffers, and built his entire complaint on secondhand and thirdhand gossip. The kind of stuff that wouldn’t survive a middle school book report, let alone an impeachment proceeding.
So CNN’s crack Russiagate squad — Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez, and Sean Lyngaas, the same guys who spent three years telling us the walls were closing in on Trump — they covered the Gabbard referral story. And they just… skipped the important parts. Didn’t mention Ciaramella by name. Didn’t mention the declassified memos showing he sought to downplay allegations of political motivation. Didn’t mention that Inspector General Michael Atkinson kept much of this hidden from the House.
That’s not cherry-picking. That’s building a fruit salad and leaving out all the fruit.
And let’s talk about Adam Schiff for a second, because this is his mess. Schiff went on national television in 2019 and said his committee “had not spoken directly with the whistleblower.” That was a lie. His staffers met with Ciaramella before the complaint was even filed. They helped him craft it. The whole thing was a coordinated hit job dressed up as a brave bureaucrat following his conscience.
(Schiff lying on camera? Shocking, we know. The man’s face was practically built for it — those unblinking bug eyes staring into the lens while he tells you the sky is green.)
The declassified documents prove what we all suspected from day one: the first impeachment was a setup. Ciaramella wasn’t some courageous truth-teller who stumbled onto presidential wrongdoing. He was a partisan operative with documented bias who got coached by Schiff’s team, filed a complaint based on rumors he heard in the cafeteria, and then hid behind “whistleblower protections” while CNN built a wall around him that would make the Secret Service jealous.
And CNN is STILL doing it. In 2026. They got the Gabbard referral story, saw the declassified evidence, and their editorial instinct was: “Better not mention the stuff that makes our guy look bad.”
That’s not journalism. That’s a coverup with a chyron.
This is why the impeachment expungement push matters, by the way. Because the whole first impeachment was built on this guy’s complaint — a complaint we now have documentary proof was tainted from the start. Ciaramella had undisclosed contact with the committee that was investigating the president. He misrepresented his political motivations to the IG. The IG hid critical information from Congress. And the media — led by CNN — refused to report any of it because it would have blown up their narrative.
Pop quiz: If a Republican operative had filed a complaint against a Democrat president, lied about his political connections, built the whole thing on hearsay, and then a major news network spent five years refusing to name him or report the evidence against him — what would CNN call that?
They’d call it a right-wing conspiracy. They’d have a countdown clock on screen. Anderson Cooper would do that thing where he takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes like he can’t believe the corruption.
But when it’s their guy? Silence. Omission. “Cherry-picked” reporting that leaves out every fact that doesn’t fit the narrative they’ve been selling since 2019.
The good news is that Gabbard’s referral means this isn’t going away. The declassified documents are out there now. We can all read them. CNN can keep pretending Eric Ciaramella is Lord Voldemort — He Who Must Not Be Named — but the rest of us have moved on to the part where we hold people accountable.
Five years of witness protection for a partisan hack. And people wonder why CNN’s ratings look like a gas station bathroom.
