On July 25, 2019, President Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The White House later released an unclassified memorandum of that conversation. On December 3, 2019, Kerry Picket of the Washington Examiner reported that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff hired Sean Misko — a former NSC official who, the Examiner said, had worked with alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella — “the day after” that call. Earlier Examiner pieces had placed Misko’s start in August. The December article said the latest congressional quarterly disbursements showed an official hire date of July 26.
That July 26 date is the Examiner’s reading of the House Statement of Disbursements. The House publishes those reports each quarter; the July 1–September 30, 2019, volume is listed on the House SOD archive. A House Administration file excerpted in public search results lists “MISKO, SEAN ANDREW” as a professional staff member paid for September 1–30, 2019. This page treats the Examiner’s July 26 hire date as reported from those records, not as a separate court finding.
HPSCI Democrats, in a January 3, 2021, statement, gave a different emphasis. They said that in May 2019 Misko “was offered and accepted a job with the Committee focused on issues related to the Middle East,” and that he “formally joined the Committee staff in July 2019 after fulfilling his responsibilities as part of the U.S. government team working to end the Afghanistan War.” They said he “had no prior knowledge of events related to Ukraine,” “never met with or provided guidance to any whistleblowers,” and “was not assigned to work on and did no work related to what became the Ukraine impeachment inquiry until late September 2019.” That is their denial of the implication. The Examiner date and the committee’s May-offer / July-join / late-September-assignment account both stay on the page. A hire date the day after a phone call is not, by itself, a crime.