Journalistic investigation reveals possible USAID involvement in 2019 Trump impeachment trial

Renowned journalist Michael Shellenberger revealed in an investigative piece published on his X account that both the CIA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the journalistic organization Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) conspired against U.S. President Donald Trump in his first term, playing a crucial role in the impeachment against the Republican leader.

According to the investigation, the complaint that led to the impeachment against Trump was based on a report by the OCCRP, which Shellenberger described as a journalistic organization that usually operates as the covert arm of USAID and the CIA to influence the domestic politics of several countries abroad. However, the renowned journalist pointed out that, in this case, its operation would have been a domestic "coup" to remove President Trump through impeachment.

The whistleblower part of the Obama administration

On his X account, Shellenberger explained that the initial whistleblower was merely a CIA analyst who worked in former President Barack Obama's administration and who used as the source of his complaint an OCCRP report that implicated, without much evidence, Florida businessmen in an alleged Trump operation to investigate ex-President Joe Biden.

"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 [Rudolph] Giuliani 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," Shellenberger tweeted.

Censorship of those who investigated the matter

The prestigious U.S. journalist also noted that a documentary by the German channel NDR, which was investigating the nexus between the U.S. government and the OCCRP, was censored under pressure from its director, Drew Sullivan, who admits that his organization has played a preponderant role in bringing down some governments abroad.

"In a 2024 documentary that German television broadcaster NDR made about OCCRP’s dependence on the US 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, 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,'" Shellenberger detailed.

Finally, the journalist concluded that the intervention of OCCRP, CIA and USAID in Trump's impeachment trial is an illegal act and similar to the regime change operations that these three entities have allegedly materialized in other countries.