Newly Released 2019 Impeachment Files Point to Previously Undisclosed Exculpatory Evidence

Newly Released 2019 Impeachment Files Point to Previously Undisclosed Exculpatory Evidence

It’s amazing to me that California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff is not in jail. This lawmaker has played it fast and loose, first during the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, which put him on the map, and next in the 2019 House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. There is no line this unethical, truth-challenged, repellent snake won’t cross in the name of politics.

Demoralized in the spring of 2019 when special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s alleged collusion with the Kremlin to win the 2016 presidential election came up empty-handed, Democrats seized upon Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for their next attempt to remove him from office.

Trump was accused of pressuring Zelensky to open an investigation into the activities of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in Ukraine, in exchange for releasing $400 million in U.S. military aid to the country that had already been approved by Congress.

The entire impeachment process was unethical. For starters, due to a change in the House rules quietly made by then-incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi shortly after the Democrats won back the majority in 2018, Trump was denied legal representation, the right to call witnesses, and the right to confront his accuser throughout the impeachment hearings.

You may recall that the whistleblower, who remained anonymous throughout the hearings for “safety reasons,” provided second-hand information to the inspector general of the Intelligence Community. [It should be noted that his identity was actually an open secret in Washington, D.C., and was ultimately revealed by investigative reporter Paul Sperry.]

At any rate, on Monday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released nearly 400 pages of previously undisclosed documents from the 2019 impeachment. And the newly declassified files give us a pretty good idea of why Schiff insisted upon the whistleblower’s anonymity.

Just the News editor John Solomon and his colleague Jerry Dunleavy, who requested that the files be declassified, obtained them on Sunday. They reported that the files “provide a starkly different portrait of the alleged whistleblower whose name and face were never shown to the public and whose lawyerly written letter accusing Trump of hijacking Ukraine policy for political gain was heralded by Democrats to launch impeachment proceedings.”

The new files showed that investigators from the inspector general’s office “developed derogatory evidence” about the whistleblower “including that he submitted false information in his whistleblower complaint, offered hearsay to support his allegations, and had the ‘potential for bias.'”

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. DNI Tulsi Gabbard just declassified bombshell files that prove the nexus of Donald Trump's impeachment scam in 2019 came from an ADMITTED leftist and liar

These files were HIDDEN from the public until now.

The so-called "whistleblower" APOLOGIZED for accusing… pic.twitter.com/gGxdSYOtH8

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 13, 2026

The investigators were concerned that the whistleblower was “a registered Democrat who had worked closely with Joe Biden on Ukraine issues and who disliked some of the conservative figures in the president’s orbit.”

He apologized to the investigators for “misleading the probe.” Solomon noted that they were “acutely aware his allegations were based solely on second- and third-hand accounts about what Trump was alleged to have said and done.” The whistleblower admitted, “I do not have direct knowledge of private comments or communications by the President.”

Of course, none of this was included in the nine-page letter Schiff “released in late summer 2019” that sparked the impeachment.

Solomon reached out to Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who served as one of Trump’s defense lawyers for this impeachment. He said, “Our adversarial system of justice requires the government to turn all exculpatory evidence over to the accused. That’s especially true when lawmakers seek to remove a duly elected president through impeachment and a Senate trial.

He continued, “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.”

From Solomon’s report:

The memos also disclose numerous other details about the whistleblower and the intelligence community’s assessment of his claims that weren’t available to the public, including that the CIA analyst:

• Appeared interested in thwarting then-Attorney General Bill Barr from probing Hunter Biden, even though Barr wasn’t a member of the intelligence community covered by the complaint;

• Disliked Republicans around Trump, including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and current FBI Director Kash Patel. The documents show the alleged whistleblower even went so far as to make a “request for Nunes not to view the disclosure” as a member of Congress even though he was a member of the “Gang of Eight” leadership entitled to see such intelligence;

• Impugned then-top Trump National Security Council staffer Michael Ellis, now the deputy CIA director, as “slippery and untrustworthy” during a voluntary interview;

• Claimed he was a victim of an intimidation campaign carried out by “right-wing bloggers”; and

• Worked on his whistleblower complaint with a witness whose name was redacted and who told investigators he was connected to Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who was fired in 2019 for his role in leading the now-discredited Russia collusion probe.

Such spontaneous statements during the early intelligence community’s review of the whistleblower complaint led the inspector general’s agents to raise red flags about the complaining CIA officer’s possible political bias.

Solomon and Dunleavy dive deep into the details. I strongly recommend reading the entire report. The documents can be viewed here.

The whistleblower’s complaint always seemed a slender reed on which to base the impeachment of a sitting U.S. president. But after the failure of the Mueller report to provide a pretext to remove Trump from office, the Democrats were desperate and they set out to make the most of it. By withholding exculpatory evidence, and taking advantage of their party’s control of the House, they were able to reach their goal.

As tenuous as their case was, and regardless of the means used to achieve it, Democrats secured that long-coveted “asterisk” beside Trump’s name in the history books, and they can pretend that it symbolizes a lack of legitimacy.

Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.

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