It’s so rare that we get actual straightforward journalism anymore that our brains are conditioned to be skeptical when we think we see it being practiced. However, journalist Michael Shellenberger has done great work over the years and has a proven track record of reliability.
All that said, his latest reporting seems to prove that an auditing of our government and its programs and agencies is warranted.
This reporting involves President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment by the House of Representatives, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It’s very involved and can trace its roots to the Obama White House.
I could go over everything in the summary Shellenberger posted to X, but I don’t believe in plagiarism, so there’s that.
Basically, the Trump impeachment was based on “reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization that is or was reportedly “effectively operated as an arm of” USAID. The CIA comes into the equation, because the whistleblower “who triggered the impeachment was a CIA analyst who was first brought into the White House by the Obama administration.”
As said, it’s a very involved story that you can read the summary of in the X post below, or watch Shellenberger detail what happened in the video of the X post:
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.
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 5, 2025
In the complaint,… pic.twitter.com/rZ6gTazw5v
Shellenberger made an appearance on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” and briefly told the host about his reporting on the subject.
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“Many people may not remember that it was a CIA analyst, who was leftover from the Obama White House, who wrote the memo that led to the impeachment,” Shellenberger told Watters. “It was all based on hearsay. The person had not actually been in the room with Trump.
Nonetheless,” Shellenberger continued, “this memo that he wrote relied heavily on a report done by an organization funded by USAID. In fact, it’s initial founding funding — I mean, now it’s tens of millions of dollars — had gone into this group called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a name that’s not very memorable, OCCRP. But it was basically created as an extension of the State Department and then of USAID. And, as you know Jesse, this is very serious to be involved in an effort to do regime change at home as we’ve been discovering as the files have come out, with what Elon Musk has been doing.”
NEW: @shellenberger tells Primetime how the USAID and the @CIA reportedly had ties to @realDonaldTrump’s impeachment. pic.twitter.com/SoIq8qfxW3
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) February 6, 2025
To his credit, Shellenberger published the response from OCCRP but also claimed that the organization “nor anyone else disproved” the allegations being reported.
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— MRCTV (@mrctv) February 6, 2025
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