Watchdog group sues CIA and DOJ for alleged whistleblower's communications, decrying 'unprecedented cover-up'

A watchdog organization says that the American public has a right to know what alleged CIA whistleblower Eric Ciaramella has been doing while working for the federal government, and has filed a pair of federal lawsuits to find out.

In a news release issued Thursday, Judicial Watch announced Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department for communications made by Ciaramella over the past few years, noting a scope of inquiry that extends past the employee's alleged role in triggering the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump earlier this year and reaches back to the hotly contested FBI Trump-Russia probe.

"There is significant public interest, thanks to the Obama Spygate scandal and the related abusive impeachment of President Trump, in what Eric Ciaramella was up to," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. "CIA operative Ciaramella is documented to be involved in the Russia collusion investigation, and was a key CIA operative on Ukraine in the both the Obama and Trump White Houses. Our lawsuits are designed to break through the unprecedented cover-up of his activities."

The lawsuit against the Department of Justice follows on the tail of unanswered requests between Ciaramella and former FBI employees Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page, the release explains, while the suit against the CIA follows requests for Ciaramella's emails from June 2016 to November of this year. Both of the FOIA requests, the organization says, were sent in November.

Ciaramella was named in a story at RealClear Investigations in late October as fitting the description of the federal employee behind the now-infamous whistleblower complaint about President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to the report, the CIA employee's name was "raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry."

Efforts to have the employee behind the complaint openly testify during the House's impeachment probe were blocked by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

In a November BlazeTV special, Glenn Beck dove into Ciaramella's professional past, saying that Congressional Democrats didn't want him to testify in an open forum "because his fingers are on everything," namely a State Department-funded and George Soros-led "shadow government" effort in Ukraine conducted during the previous administration.

The full special can be found here:

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