The Illustrated Laptop From Hell - Part IV
The Ukraine Cover-up
A dramatization of real events. Click here for Part I.
May 15, 2017 - National Security Council Email System: “Putin Fired Comey”
Eric Ciaramella sat at his NSC computer terminal and composed an email that would later appear in the Mueller Report.
Subject: Recent meetings.
The message documented that President Trump had met with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office the day after firing FBI Director Comey. It noted that Putin had called Trump a week earlier.
The email went “outside his chain of command,” according to former colleagues. It went to other agencies. To people who would talk to the press.
Within days, media reports claimed Trump had boasted to the Russians about firing “crazy, a real nut job” Comey.
The narrative took hold: Putin fired Comey. Trump did it at Russia’s bidding. The collusion was obvious.
None of it was true. But the story served its purpose—intensifying calls for a special counsel to investigate Trump.
Ciaramella’s email had helped generate the “Putin fired Comey” narrative. Years later, when he filed the Ukraine whistleblower complaint, Republicans would note a pattern: Ciaramella leaking information designed to damage Trump, then claiming to be a neutral witness simply reporting facts.
June 15, 2017 - The White House
Eric Ciaramella packed his desk at the White House.
The official story was vague. “Personnel changes.” “Rotation back to his home agency.” The usual bureaucratic euphemisms.
But inside the Trump White House, the whispers were different. Suspected leaks. Anti-Trump animus. Policy disagreements. The young NSC staffer who’d worked on Ukraine policy under Obama had allegedly been feeding negative information about the new administration to reporters.
Conservative blogger Mike Cernovich had named him publicly. Accusations flew. Threats followed.
Whether Ciaramella was pushed out or pulled back to protect him, the result was the same: By mid-2017, he was gone from the White House and back at CIA headquarters in Langley.
But he wasn’t gone from Ukraine policy. He remained active in the Russia and Eurasia analytical circle. Still the expert. Still watching. Still connected to the Obama network that had championed the billion-dollar loan guarantee and the firing of Viktor Shokin.
And still fully opposed to President Donald Trump.
June 22, 2017 - CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Ciaramella’s blue badge still worked at Langley. His clearances remained active. His expertise was valued.
He settled back into a low-profile intelligence role—the same Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia portfolio he’d handled at the NSC, but now from a desk at the CIA instead of the White House.
Throughout 2017 and 2018, while Ciaramella was at Langley analyzing Russia and Ukraine, the same issues he’d worked on under Biden were resurfacing:
Hunter Biden was still collecting monthly Burisma checks
Rudy Giuliani was beginning to collect testimony from Ukrainian prosecutors about Biden’s pressure campaign
The fraudulent FISA warrants on Carter Page—processed by the same Justice Department office where Michael Atkinson had been senior counsel—were being renewed quarterly
The Mueller investigation was ramping up
Ciaramella remained in the loop on Ukraine policy from his CIA position. He was the subject-matter expert. The institutional memory. The man who’d been there when Biden threatened to withhold the billion-dollar loan guarantee.
And apparently, he never raised any concerns about the Biden-Burisma conflict of interest during this entire period.
Not until Trump asked Ukraine to investigate it.
January 23, 2018 - Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C.
Joe Biden sat comfortably, relaxed and confident, telling a story he’d apparently told before.
The event was a foreign policy discussion. The topic turned to Ukraine. And Biden launched into his now-infamous anecdote about getting Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin fired.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion,’” Biden recounted, his voice taking on the theatrical quality of a man who enjoys telling the story. “I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’”
He paused for effect.
“Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
The audience laughed. Biden smiled. It was played as a triumph of American anti-corruption policy—the tough vice president cleaning up Ukrainian corruption.
But Biden didn’t mention that Shokin had been investigating Burisma. He didn’t mention that his son Hunter was on Burisma’s board, collecting between $42,000 and $84,000 per month.
He just told the story. On camera. At the Council on Foreign Relations. Creating a permanent video record that would later become exhibit A when Trump asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
March 4, 2018 - Bank Wire Transfer
Another month. Another wire transfer from Burisma Holdings to Hunter Biden’s account.
$42,000.
The amount had been standardized since early 2017, reduced from the $83,333 monthly payments he’d received while his father was vice president. But the money kept flowing. Every month. Like clockwork.
By March 2018, Hunter had already collected over $1 million from Burisma in 2016, another $630,000 in 2017. Now 2018 was adding to the total at $42,000 per month—roughly $500,000 for the year.
For what, exactly? Hunter had no experience in the energy sector. No expertise in Ukrainian regulatory affairs. No apparent work product beyond attending occasional board meetings.
The money was for access. For insurance. For the Biden name.
And it kept coming throughout 2018—the entire year that Rudy Giuliani was beginning his outreach to Ukrainian prosecutors, the entire year that the Mueller investigation was running, the entire year that Eric Ciaramella was quietly analyzing Ukraine policy from his desk at Langley.
Hunter would later describe 2018 as a low point in his addiction. Crack. Alcohol. Prostitutes. Day after day after day.
But the Burisma checks kept clearing.
May 15, 2018 - United States Senate
The Senate confirmed Michael Atkinson as Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
It was a significant appointment. The ICIG is an independent watchdog, tasked with investigating misconduct and receiving whistleblower complaints from across the intelligence community.
Atkinson’s background made him an unusual choice. He was a lawyer, not an intelligence professional. He’d spent the previous two years as senior counsel at the Justice Department’s National Security Division—the office that had processed all four fraudulent FISA warrants on Carter Page based on the Steele dossier.
He’d worked directly for Mary McCord, who had managed the early months of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. He’d been in the office during the period when opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign was presented to a secret court as evidence to spy on a Trump campaign associate.
None of this came up during his confirmation hearing.
Now, as ICIG, Atkinson would have the authority to receive and forward whistleblower complaints to Congress—complaints about presidential misconduct, intelligence community abuses, national security threats.
Fifteen months later, he would receive a complaint from Eric Ciaramella about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president.
June 1, 2018 - Intelligence Community Inspector General’s Office
The official whistleblower disclosure form hadn’t changed.
Since May 2018, when Atkinson took office, the form had explicitly required firsthand knowledge for complaints transmitted to Congress as matters of “urgent concern.”
The language was clear: Whistleblowers needed direct, personal knowledge of the wrongdoing they were reporting. Hearsay wasn’t sufficient. Second-hand information wasn’t enough.
This requirement made sense. Whistleblower complaints to Congress triggered investigations, hearings, potential impeachment proceedings. They needed to be based on solid evidence, not rumors or gossip.
The form would remain unchanged throughout 2018 and into mid-2019.
Then, in August 2019—the same month Eric Ciaramella filed his complaint about Trump’s Ukraine call based entirely on second-hand information—the form would be quietly revised.
The firsthand knowledge requirement would disappear.
Atkinson would later claim the change had been in the works for months, part of routine updates. But the timing was extraordinary: The form was changed to accommodate a complaint that wouldn’t have qualified under the old rules.
A complaint from a CIA analyst who hadn’t been on the Trump-Zelensky call. Who had no direct knowledge of it. Who had only heard about it from others.
But in June 2018, the old form was still in place. Firsthand knowledge required.
October 13, 2018 - Hunter Biden’s Email
The email Hunter sent to his business partners was brief and bitter.
“I love you all but I don’t receive any respect and that’s fine I guess.”
Hunter’s addiction was spiraling, when his business deals were becoming increasingly desperate, when he was still pulling in $42,000 monthly from Burisma but clearly feeling the strain.
A few weeks later, he would make a fateful decision that would eventually expose everything.
April 12, 2019 - The Mac Shop, Wilmington, Delaware
Hunter Biden walked into John Paul Mac Isaac’s computer repair shop carrying three MacBook Pros.
They were water-damaged. He said he’d spilled something on them. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe high. Probably both. Isaac would later testify that the customer seemed impaired.
Hunter signed a repair authorization. Left the laptops. Promised to return.
He never did.
The contract was clear: If the customer didn’t pay for the service or retrieve the equipment within 90 days, the property became the shop’s.
On those hard drives was everything. Emails proving the “smoking gun” meeting between Joe Biden and Burisma executives. Videos of Hunter smoking crack and having sex. Financial records showing the full extent of the foreign payments. Text messages about “the Big Guy” getting his cut.
The entire Biden family influence-peddling operation, documented in excruciating detail, abandoned in a Delaware repair shop by a drug-addicted son who couldn’t keep track of his own computers.
It was October 2018. The Trump-Zelensky call wouldn’t happen for another nine months. The whistleblower complaint wouldn’t be filed for eleven months. The impeachment inquiry wouldn’t begin for a year.
But the evidence of what Trump would later ask Ukraine to investigate—all of it was sitting on those hard drives in Wilmington.
Waiting.
A dramatization of real events. Click here to start at Part I.
The Illustrated Spygate is available in paperback! Buy it here in time for Christmas!
The Illustrated Spygate is available in paperback! Buy it here in time for Christmas!
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