Bombshell – USAID, CIA, State Dept. Played Role in 1st Trump Impeachment: Top Reporter in America

How did USAID, the CIA, and the State Department each play a role in getting President Donald Trump impeached back in 2019?

It’s not some grand conspiracy out of an Oliver Stone movie, says independent journalist and University of Austin professor Michael Shellenberger. Instead, the author of “Apocalypse Never: How Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” and “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities” — who, rather surprisingly given those titles, started his career on the progressive left — alleged in a Wednesday report that they’re all connected to the impeachment proceedings through a little-known, “supposedly independent investigative news organization” known as the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, or OCCRP.

For those of you who don’t recall the subject of that impeachment — indeed, it seems practically quaint and forgettable given the events that unfolded afterwards — Trump was accused of improperly pressuring the newly elected president of Ukraine (some guy named Volodymyr Zelenskyy; whatever happened to him?) on a call to investigate corruption in the country involving certain American interests, particularly involving the Biden family.

The impeachable offense was that there was a claim Trump was offering a quid pro quo involving congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine being released upon investigation of the alleged corruption. The administration argued no such arrangement existed and the president was simply emphasizing that corruption, not a scarce commodity in Kyiv, needed to be addressed going forward.

The impeachment was predicated upon the testimony of a CIA whistleblower, who, as Shellenberger noted in his report, “claimed to have heard from White House staff that Trump had, on a phone call, directed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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.”

In his Aug. 12, 2019, whistleblower complaint, the CIA analyst referenced an OCCRP report involving then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani 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. According to the story, those two businessmen connected Giuliani to two former Ukrainian prosecutors,” Shellenberger reported.

“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 times.”

And therein lies the long, deep rabbit hole that leads back to an opaque, relatively small (funding-wise, anyhow) American government agency called USAID which — as you may have heard — has suddenly become the Democrats’ favorite, most high-priority federal agency now that the second Trump administration is looking at shuttering it and/or folding its responsibilities into the State Department.

In 2024, NDR, a German public broadcaster, was set to air a report on the supposedly very independent OCCRP. The documentary — which NDR worked on with other journalistic organizations, including left-wing American outlet Drop Site News — exposed that, contrary to its claims of being an unbiased and unattached outlet, the OCCRP was dependent on U.S. government funding.

Funding from where? You’ll never believe it, but Shellenberger said that in the documentary, “a USAID official confirmed that USAID approves OCCRP’s ‘annual work plan’ and approves new hires of ‘key personnel.’”

On Dec. 2, Drop Site reported the story itself: “A Giant of Journalism Gets Half its Budget From the U.S. Government.”

“Between 2014 and 2023, the American federal government provided 52 percent of the money actually spent by OCCRP, and, since its founding in 2008, has shoveled at least $47 million (and committed $12 million more) to the ostensibly independent, nonprofit newsroom,” Drop Site reported.

“Other Western governments — including Britain, France, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands — have kicked in at least $15 million during the last 10 years. That’s according to a tabulation of OCCRP’s annual audit reports, cross-referenced with federal budget documents outlining disbursements. The review was conducted by a consortium of international news outlets, including Drop Site News, and is being published in conjunction with news outlets in Italy, France, and Greece … While OCCRP has consistently disclosed that it accepts some money from governments, including the United States, the full extent of the financing has not previously been revealed.”

However, NDR “censored” its documentary — because, as another one of its investigative partners disclosed, NDR faced pressure “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.”

This apparently included, as per Drop Site, referring to NDR’s John Goetz as a potential “Russian asset” for taking part in the investigation.

Shellenberger revealed that even despite the attempts at censorship, the results of the investigation were damning.

“The journalistic collaboration revealed that OCCRP’s original funding came from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the State Department, and quotes a USAID official who says, ‘Drew’s just nervous about being linked with law enforcement,’ referring to Sullivan. ‘If people who are going to give you information think you’re just a cop, maybe it’s a problem,’” Shellenberger noted.

“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 that his organization had ‘probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government… and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out.’”

Thus, Shellenberger said, “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, known as ‘cut-outs,’ to interfere in US politics this way.”

The House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on December 18, 2019, after a White House whistleblower went public with evidence that Trump abused his powers by withholding military aid to Ukraine in order to dig up dirt on his rival, Joe Biden.

In the complaint,… pic.twitter.com/rZ6gTazw5v

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 5, 2025

It was best summed up in an in interview Shellenberger conducted with Fox News’ Jesse Watters, where Watters summed it up ominously: “USAID was involved in regime change abroad and here at home.” More or less, if accurate.

JUST IN: Michael Shellenberger claims that the USAID and CIA have ties to President Trump’s impeachment. pic.twitter.com/vkv9Ld2KZF

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) February 6, 2025

Now, again, caveat lector: Even though Shellenberger is not a MAGA acolyte, this still all falls under the aegis of “big if true.”

It also doesn’t prove a collaborative effort if it’s all factual — merely that a CIA analyst, USAID and State Department grant managers, and OCCRP had similar ideological cants, an animus against Donald Trump, an interest in a pro-Western Ukrainian government (no matter how much action they took on corruption), and no compunction against acting as agents of regime change, including (most disconcertingly) at home.

Whatever the case, if you want to know what the fight over USAID is about for Democrats, it isn’t about disengaging from foreign aid to needy countries, or Elon Musk having his way as an unelected efficiency czar, or anything like that. It’s about the fact that USAID is an organization designed around opacity and the freedom to pursue ideological goals without those goals being questioned by prying eyes who wonder where the money goes.

Did it go toward President Donald Trump’s first impeachment? The reporting seems to indicate a major organ of USAID (and State Department) funding was relied upon by a CIA analyst to make a case that the president of the United States shouldn’t be president.

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