Journalist called to testify on ‘CIA-funded Trump impeachment’

ISTANBUL

Investigative American journalist Michael Shellenberger was called to testify before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday regarding allegations that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the CIA funded the 2019 impeachment effort against President Donald Trump.

Shellenberger first addressed the issue on Feb. 6 on the social media platform X, explaining how the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) played a central role in leading the impeachment effort.

“USAID’s defenders say it’s about charity and development in poor nations. It’s not. It’s a $40 billion driver of regime change abroad. And now the evidence suggests that it, along with the CIA, were behind the 2019 impeachment of Trump—an illegal regime change effort at home,” Shellenberger wrote.

He elaborated on how OCCRP worked as an "arm" of USAID, publishing a report centered around two Soviet-born Florida businessmen who allegedly acted as key figures behind Trump's investigation into the Biden family.

According to Shellenberger, these two businessmen connected Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, to two former Ukrainian prosecutors.

“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,” he stated.

In his evaluation of the OCCRP report, Shellenberger criticized the organization for acting beyond the scope of traditional investigative journalism.

“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.’”

Shellenberger stated, "As such, it appears that (the) 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 the CIA, USAID, and its contractors and intermediaries, known as ‘cut-outs,’ to interfere in U.S. politics this way.”

Shellenberger was invited by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to testify on "Eliminating Waste by the Foreign Aid Bureaucracy."

In his testimony, Shellenberger reiterated examples of USAID's controversial actions, including its involvement in previous operations outside its intended mission.

“For example, under President Barack Obama’s administration, USAID was caught using an HIV program to foment rebellion in Cuba. USAID used EcoHealth Alliance as a passthrough organization to funnel $1.1 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting risky gain-of-function experiments that may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.

Citing the founding rationale of USAID by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 “to promote America’s values,” Shellenberger questioned, “Why has USAID been spending so much money on information control and information operations, both in the form of demanding censorship by social media platforms and financing supposedly ‘independent’ journalism? Why is the U.S. government in general and USAID in particular the largest donor to supposedly ‘independent media’ worldwide?”