Shady Former Obama Officials Started Trump-Ukraine Investigation Before Whistleblower Complaint
Before the now-famous phone call between President Trump and the leader of Ukraine, it appears that a shadow Democrat group with ties to the former Obama administration officials and Democrat congressional staffers.
The group is called American Oversight and it began “investigating” President Trump back in May, more than two months before the “whistleblower” complaint was filed.
The American Oversight group files Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA) lawsuits requesting reports and documents from the Trump Administration that can be used to help Democrat congressional investigations. The group started digging up dirt on Ukraine well before the “whistleblower” came forward that started the impeachment process.
American Oversight proudly claims to be the top “Freedom of Information Act Litigator investigating the Trump administration.”
In April the group launched “parallel investigation initiative” to help Democrats in congress investigate the Trump administration, in a statement the group said:
Today, American Oversight announces the Parallel Investigations Initiative to lay the groundwork for this potential surge in congressional oversight activity. We have begun proactively tracking oversight requests made by both the chairs and ranking members of key congressional committees and, in many cases, we’ve already submitted parallel FOIA requests for the same information.
…
The Trump administration won’t know what hit them. Independent FOIA litigation paired with aggressive congressional oversight creates a nightmare for federal agencies because of the different levers litigants and members of Congress can pull to enforce their demands.
On May 21, 2019, American Oversight filed an FOIA request wanting the documents over the firing of US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. On the same day, 13 House Democrats requested an impeachment inquiry.
It appears that the catalysts for the May 21st request were to counter the fact that in March of 2019 Ukraine started looking into everything surrounding the Biden’s.
In March of 2017, the group was founded by Austin Evers, a former senior counsel inside the Obama State Department. In 2018 Evers said in an interview, “I was quite troubled by the election of Donald Trump and his posture toward towards public service as a private enterprise, and I was also concerned that there didn’t seem to be any transparency watchdogs that planned to be antagonistic toward the administration. We had faced such high profile and aggressive litigation during the last administration that I wanted to model to make sure that this administration was held accountable.”
Despite the group claiming to be non-partisan its staff has mostly worked for Democrat lawmakers. It’s funding has been completely hidden and claims to be organized as a 501(c)(3) and refuses to discuss who its donors are.
The group is also assisting Democrats with their impeachment effort after receiving a bunch of emails from an FOIA request CNN reported on the emails, shortly after that Senator Schumer cited one of the emails demanding a Trump official testify at the Senate impeachment trial. Schumer said:
If there was ever an argument that we need [Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey], to come testify, this is that information. This email is explosive. A top administration official, one that we requested, is saying, stop the aid 90 minutes after Trump called Zelensky and said keep it hush, hush. What more do you need to request a witness?
Information provided by the group has also been seen in reports issued by Rep. Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee.
This was a set up by Democrats and former Obama officials from the start.
There are numerous examples and Breitbart News lays them out one by one, you can click here to read more.