On November 19, 2019, Kerry Picket of the Washington Examiner reported that alleged Ukraine whistleblower Eric Ciaramella “was close friends at the White House” with Sean Misko, then an aide to House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff. The Examiner identified Misko as NSC Director for the Gulf States from 2015 until the first half of 2018, and Ciaramella as a career CIA analyst and Ukraine director on the NSC from at least 2016 until the summer of 2017. Both, the paper said, arrived in the Obama years and left in the Trump years.
The friendship description is attributed to one former National Security Council official, unnamed, described as senior to Ciaramella and as a nonpolitical appointee. “My understanding was that they were friendly with one another,” the official said. “They would walk around the halls. Get lunch together and stuff like that.” He described them as “very much cut from the same cloth,” and their friendship as “bro-like.” The Examiner also wrote that the two were described as workplace friends “who had similarly antagonistic attitudes toward the Trump administration.” That is the source’s characterization. It is not a finding by this site.
Ciaramella is identified in that reporting — and in later RealClearInvestigations pieces — as the alleged whistleblower. That identification is a press identification. It is not an official confirmation reprinted here as fact. The Examiner wrote that neither Ciaramella nor a Schiff spokesman responded to requests for comment. A workplace-friend description from one anonymous former official is an allegation of a relationship, not a crime and not a transcript.