A reporter asked former vice president Joe Biden if he plans to hire his former staffer, Eric Ciaramella, if elected president.
Monday night, while covering his Manchester, New Hampshire campaign event for @OANN, I asked @JoeBiden if his former staffer Eric Ciaramella would be a part of his administration. #OANN #NHprimary #NHPolitics pic.twitter.com/m0dblbAgrZ
— ReporterMcCabe (@NeilWMcCabe2) February 11, 2020
Biden didn’t want to talk about it.
Ciaramella, of course, is the alleged whistleblower who triggered Democrats’ failed attempt to impeach President Trump.
“Monday night, while covering his Manchester, New Hampshire campaign event for @OANN, I asked @JoeBiden if his former staffer Eric Ciaramella would be a part of his administration,” One America News Network’s White House correspondent, Neil McCabe, posted to Twitter, along with a video of the encounter.
Biden’s reaction said it all.
“Will Eric Ciaramella have a job in your administration?” McCabe asked the elderly statesman.
“I’m not elected yet,” Biden shot back, leaving the door open, as his staffer attempted to tamp down the questions.
“I’m sorry, we don’t have time for an interview,” the woman snarled.
“How about Eric Ciaramella? What do you remember about his …,” McCabe continued.
“Come, on, sir,” the handler interjected. “Come on, sir.
“We don’t have time for an interview, thank you,” she badgered.
It was the first time a real reporter asked Biden about the politically motivated whistleblower to his face on camera.
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Biden has repeatedly insisted that neither he nor his son, Hunter, did anything improper during his tenure as Obama’s vice president, when he was tasked with overseeing relations with Ukraine, China and other key allies.
But in 2018, Biden boasted during a Council on Foreign Relations meeting about threatening to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine until officials there fired a prosecutor investigating corruption at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian natural gas company that paid Hunter Biden millions.
President Trump encouraged Ukrainian officials last summer to investigate corruption in the country, which reportedly triggered an anonymous whistleblower complaint from Ciaramella, who did not hear the alleged conversations first hand.
Ciaramella worked as the Ukraine director on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. The 34-year-old is a career CIA analyst served as NSC’s Ukraine director before transitioning to acting NSC senior director for European and Russian affairs for President Trump.
“Ciaramella was cited in a key passage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in connection with the meeting between Trump and Russian officials in the Oval Office the day after James Comes was fired as FBI director,” The Washington Examiner reports. “The CIA officer worked with Joe Biden, then vice president, on Ukraine policy and was Biden’s guest at a State Department banquet in October 2016.”
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