Michael Shellenberger Explains How the CIA and USAID Were Behind Trump 2019 Impeachment

SHELLENBERGER: “Hi, everybody, it’s Mike Shellenberger for ‘Public.’ The House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump in December 2019, after a White House whistleblower went public with evidence that Trump had abused his powers by withholding military aid to Ukraine in order to dig up dirt on his rival, Joe Biden. In the complaint, the whistleblower claimed to have heard from White House staff that Trump had, on a phone call, directed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. The whistleblower who triggered the impeachment was a CIA analyst who was first brought into the White House by the Obama Administration. Reporting by Drop Site News last year revealed that the CIA analyst relied on reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project or the OCCRP, which appears to have effectively operated as an arm of the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, which President Trump has just shut down. The CIA whistleblower complaint cited a long report by OCCRP four times. The OCCRP report alleged that two Soviet-born Florida businessmen were ‘key hidden actors behind a plan’ by Trump to investigate the Bidens. Those two businessmen connected Giuliani to two former Ukrainian prosecutors, according to OCCRP. The OCCRP story was crucial to the House Democrats’ impeachment claim, which is that Trump dispatched Giuliani as part of a coordinated effort to pressure a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, which is why the whistleblower cited it four separate times. In a 2024 documentary that German television broadcaster NDR made about OCCRP’s dependence on the U.S. government, a USAID official confirmed that USAID approves OCCRP’s ‘annual work plan’ and approves new hires of ‘key personnel.’ NDR initiated and carried out the investigation with French investigative news organization Mediapart, an Italian new group Il Fatto Quotidiano, Reporters United in Greece, and Drop Site News in the United States. However, according to a Mediapart story published the same day as the Drop Site News article, NDR censored the broadcast after US journalist Drew Sullivan, the co-founder and head of the OCCRP, placed pressure on the NDR management and made false accusations against the broadcaster’s journalists involved in the project. On December 16, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim posted a Link on X to the 26-minute-long documentary. ‘NDR, Germany’s public broadcaster, is facing a censorship scandal’ — he wrote — ‘and has defended itself by saying it never killed a news report about OCCRP and its State Department funding, because no report was ever produced to kill. That was absurd’ — wrote Grim — ‘and dozens, maybe hundreds, of journalists knew it to be false, and now of course, someone has leaked it.’ The Drop Site journalistic collaboration revealed that OCCRP’s original funding came from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the State Department, and it quotes a USAID official who says —“
HENNING: “Drew’s just nervous about being linked with law enforcement.”
Reporter: “About what?”
HENNING: “Well, because sources may be right. If people that are going to give you information think, ‘Oh, you’re just a cop, right, I mean, maybe it’s a problem. Or — and other governments, you know, other, you know, say you’re trying to get into a country and do something and the government says, ‘Oh, you’re — what are you, law enforcement or not, right? Like, there’s a need that — you know, the separation, the independence is important. Because if you lose that, you lose your — your sense of like — you know, your — it’s a value — your reputation is incredibly important.”
SHELLENBERGER: “OCCRP does not operate like a normal investigative journalism organization in that its goals appear to include interfering in foreign political matters, including elections, aimed at regime change. Sullivan told NDR —“
SULLIVAN: “We probably been responsible for about five or six countries changing over from one government to another government, you know, because and getting, you know, and people — you know, prime ministers indicted or thrown out.”
SHELLENBERGER: “As such, it appears that CIA, USAID, and OCCRP were all involved in the impeachment of President Trump in ways similar to the regime change operations that all three organizations engage in abroad. The difference is that it is highly illegal and even treasonous for CIA, USAID, and its contractors and intermediaries, often called cut-outs, to interfere in U.S. politics in this way. In response to questions that we sent to OCCRP it threatened to file a lawsuit against us. ‘The premise of your article is factually false and defamatory,’ wrote Miranda Patrucic, the Editor in Chief of OCCRP, over email. ‘The claim by Dropsite News and partner media that USAID has control over editorial appointments has been disproven’ — she wrote — ‘and we suggest you read our response to that.’ But neither OCCRP nor anyone else disproved Drop Site’s allegations and Drop Site stands by them. And the evidence does not support OCCRP’s claim of journalistic independence.”
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